Exodus

by Alex Lamb

  As they raced towards the site where Will and Nada had started fighting, Mark and the others watched the battle proceed in warp-induced fast-time.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Clath. ‘That boser beam went through Will’s ship like it wasn’t there. And now what’s she firing?’ Clath inhaled sharply. ‘Fuck. Is that a cloud of red shift? No, that’s just wrong! Mark, this is scaring me. They’re ripping up space–time like turf under tyres.’

  Then, just when Will’s ship appeared to be poised for a killing strike, it turned a ghostly silver and drifted.

  ‘Wait – what?’ said Palla. ‘What just happened to Will?’

  ‘That’s standing-warp,’ Clath exclaimed, ‘like the Subtle ark used. But why here? Why now?’

  Nada fired on Will’s ship again to absolutely no effect. Then she tried a weapon that sucked the light out of the surrounding space. A hammer-blow gravity wave passed through the D-Two’s hull.

  ‘Shit!’ said Palla. ‘Whatever that was, it can’t be good.’

  Will’s ship, though, looked entirely unaffected. And that was when Nada appeared to belatedly notice that she had other targets.

  ‘Pointless humans!’ she messaged. ‘You have been detected. Note that your Usurper has been reduced to cringing. Power down your drives and submit. A useful future awaits you as host bodies for my persona.’

  ‘The Photes always did have a great line in tempting offers,’ Mark observed as he threw the ship into a violent pattern of evasive manoeuvres.

  Their new ship compensated for the slewing gravity so smoothly that he barely felt it. He suspected that the engines were somehow shaping their reference frame, just like the time-dilation machine on the ark.

  His moves came just in time. Something that might have been a particle beam licked past their ship. This time, gravity eddies smacked through the hull like invisible rhinos.

  ‘I don’t care for that weapon,’ said Mark. ‘Whatever the fuck it is.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Nada sent. ‘If you cannot behave like rational entities, you shall die instead.’

  A wave of drones so thick it looked like glistening liquid separated from Nada’s fleet and ripped out to meet them. Mark had never seen so many. Behind them came Nada’s own cruiser, sliding through the out-system as if the normal rules of physics did not apply to it. Which, on reflection, they probably didn’t.

  ‘Now would be a really good time for us to find out what those weapons can do,’ said Palla.

  ‘I agree,’ Clath squeaked. ‘Would you like a hand?’

  22.7: ANN

  Ann watched in horror as the Photes swapped their attention to the dark smudge that had to be Mark’s ship. He turned and boosted away at an impressive fraction of light-speed. Nada followed up with another shot from her peculiar, barely detectable beam-weapon. In the same instant that it hit, Mark’s ship acquired a strange new warp-shield that rippled like quicksilver. The beam dissipated on contact, filling the surrounding space with a haze of ruddy, twinkling light.

  ‘Was that just lucky timing?’ said Ann.

  ‘Nobody’s that lucky,’ said Ira. ‘Mark’s ship pre-empted her somehow.’

  However, with his shield active, it was clear that Mark’s ship couldn’t move. By the time Nada stopped blasting him, the drones had flown too close for him to escape. They slammed into his defensive wall by the hundred. It mattered not. They splashed out of the far side as tortured blobs of hot metal.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she asked Ira.

  ‘It was hard to miss.’

  ‘If our shields are that good, what’s to stop us from attacking?’

  Ira grinned. ‘So far as I can tell, not much. And I think that’s the point. Will never expected us to sit back – he knew we’d come after him if something happened. He might be a living god, but he’s still a lousy liar.’

  Ann felt the tug of responsibility. ‘We should get in there before it’s too late,’ she said, though she loathed the idea of fighting again. ‘We could make a dive for Nada’s capital ship while she’s focused on Mark. I know you won’t want to do that.’

  Ira regarded her in surprise. ‘Are you crazy? It’s the idea of losing you that I can’t stand. Going up in a ball of flame beside you works fine. I have one stipulation, though: I drive. You can figure out all the crazy weapons and shields.’

  Ann snorted. ‘Don’t you prefer an outmoded helm-metaphor?’

  ‘Copied it into my shadow when we left the Dantes,’ said Ira. ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘In that case, be my guest,’ she said. ‘Though I may rip control from you if your flight skills prove inadequate.’

  Ira smirked. ‘I doubt you’ll need to.’

  She passed him helm-control. He swung them wildly above the ecliptic, around the main thrust of the battle and then back down towards Nada’s cruiser at an oblique angle. The oozing sea of drones struggled to track them and Ira had timed it nicely. He made it look as if they were desperately trying to escape the fray right up until he had a clear angle of attack.

  He powered back down, aiming straight through the sea of enemy munitions, using both warp and conventional thrust to boost their momentum. Their ion plume made their position obvious, but by then it didn’t matter.

  ‘This ship is sweet!’ he yelled. ‘Shame it’s not going to last.’

  As the first drones impacted, the D-Three’s drives cut out. The universe flickered as they plunged through the munitions cloud. Ann saw her opportunity – six of the more ordinary Photurian ships had followed Nada out. Now they were lining up to boser the D-Three out of existence, using the drone assault as cover.

  Ann picked something called a distorter-beam and fired short, conservative shots at them. The ships burst apart in a tidy row. Ira cheered.

  An image of Will appeared in helm-space. ‘If you can see me, you must be firing your new weapons,’ he said. ‘Be careful. Get too involved in this fight and the Transcended may deactivate your ship. I recommend keeping a low profile.’

  ‘You want to do that?’ said Ira.

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ she replied.

  ‘Just checking.’

  As soon as they had enough open space to fly in, Ira doubled their warp and dived on Nada’s ship.

  ‘Three seconds to targeting range,’ he said. ‘Two … one …’

  Their engines, weapons and cloak all died. Emergency lighting filled the cabin. Their assault was finished, just like Mark’s and Will’s. So much for their bold rescue of Galatea. Suddenly, the hull’s quiet ticking was all they could hear.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Ann, and gripped her crash couch with both hands. ‘Really?’

  ‘I guess we were warned,’ said Ira.

  Nada’s ship pivoted with leisurely menace, bringing its main weapons array to bear. Ann gazed at that vast and terrible vessel and knew at least that it would be a good death, even if she no longer wanted one.

  Then, behind them, bursts of warp-light flared at the edge of the out-system as new vessels appeared. There were forty of them and they all looked remarkably like the Ariel Two.

  They took just seconds to assess the state of battle before opening fire with g-rays and super-bosers, targeting every Photurian ship they could see. A wide-cast arrival message flared out from the mystery armada.

  A window opened in helm-space, showing a woman with Will’s eyes and mouth, and hair cut in a severe dark bob.

  ‘This is Representative Moneko Thirty-Four Ninety-Eight of the Willworld Collective Navy,’ she announced. ‘We are here to deliver news and provide support for our human brethren. The Photurian menace at the world you call Snakepit has been crushed. Photurians, prepare to die.’

  Ann could only gape.

  23: ENLIGHTENMENT

  23.1: IRA

  ‘Ann, take the helm,’ he told her. ‘I’ll cover comms.’

  He wrestled with their crippled systems until they agreed to open a tight-beam channel to the leading ship from the new fleet.

  ‘Representativ
e Moneko,’ he sent, ‘this is Ira Baron aboard the GSS Dantes Three. We need your help. Our ship is de-powered and under threat from the vessel at the following coordinates. If this message reaches you before we die, please assist.’

  He dearly hoped that this time he was talking to some version of Will that was able to recognise him as an ally. He needn’t have worried. Nada’s vessel made so obvious a target that the new ships had already started converging their fire upon it. Their boser beams did exactly zero damage, but they caused Nada’s shields to flare, preventing her from firing back.

  However, there wasn’t enough distraction to stop all the swarming drones from changing tack. One of them dived at the D-Three’s hull. Ira flinched and expected to die as a blast threw them halfway out of their couches.

  ‘We’re still here,’ he said in astonishment a few breaths later.

  The drone was an expanding cloud of ions and debris. Five more came after it, knocking the teeth around in Ira’s skull but causing no more damage than that.

  ‘How?’ he blurted. ‘We don’t even have power.’

  ‘False matter,’ Ann reminded him. ‘Best armour there is.’

  Ira let loose a guffaw of unhinged laughter. Then Moneko’s reply arrived.

  ‘Happy to oblige,’ she said. ‘Long time, no see, Ira. Sending support to your position.’

  Moneko’s fleet advanced, keeping up a barrage of fire. Whenever Nada had a clear shot, her horrifying new death-beam lashed out, obliterating a nestship every time. It staggered him to see vessels of such size and power rendered so vulnerable. Not that many weeks ago, one of those two-hundred-klick-long cruisers had been enough to change the tide of a battle. Now they were yesterday’s news. Things had escalated fast.

  Suddenly, the power came back on.

  ‘What happened?’ said Ira.

  ‘Nothing I did,’ said Ann. ‘I think we drifted out of targeting range for Nada’s ship. The Transcended must be protecting it, just as Will warned.’

  Ira smiled. ‘They might have our ship on a leash but they clearly can’t affect Moneko. And now Nada has too many targets to fight. We’ll use that.’

  He swapped back to the open channel. ‘Moneko? You’re some kind of Will clone, right? If you keep Nada pinned down, Mark and I will hit the smaller Phote ships. Does that work for you? And mind if I ask how in hell’s name you’re here?’

  Ann took the D-Three ripping away from Nada’s cruiser as fast as she could and worked at blowing holes in the more vulnerable old-style Phote ships.

  ‘Yes, a clone,’ came Moneko’s reply. ‘Nada’s absorption of our world didn’t go as planned. Somewhere in the chaos, we figured out two things. First, that humanity was now under serious threat, and second, that one of our Glitches had already made it as far as your ship. Because of that, I was selected as the most suitable representative of our kind. What we found at New Panama scared the pants off us. I’m just glad we got here in time.’

  ‘Let’s hope that’s true,’ said Ira. ‘It’s not over yet.’

  23.2: WILL

  While Will struggled to keep a handle on the controls of the featureless virt, the Transcended forced open a video window. It held a view from Will’s own external cameras showing the battle around him in grisly detail.

  ‘Watch,’ she said. ‘We know about the backup copies of the weapon you devised. The ships containing them were infected accordingly. You won’t be allowed to use them to alter the Nada-entity.’

  He caught sight of Mark’s ship turtled under a warp-shell and then saw Ann dive into targeting range, only to have her power die.

  ‘You aren’t helping your friends,’ said the Nada avatar. ‘You’re merely putting them in harm’s way. Is that what you want?’

  ‘No, but we have nothing to lose,’ said Will. ‘You should have thought about that before you started fucking with us.’

  ‘Stop resisting and we’ll shut Nada down for you,’ the Transcended urged. ‘You’re being ridiculous. There is simply no way for you to exercise control in this situation.’

  As if on cue, the Ariel copies burst into the fray.

  ‘What is this?’ said the Nada avatar.

  The new ships started firing and the battle descended rapidly into chaos. Mark’s ship got its break and sped away from Nada with all haste. Will burst into laughter.

  ‘No control?’ he sneered. ‘I’ll tell you who’s got no control. Didn’t put control hacks in those new ships, did you? They can piss all over Nada as much as they like.’

  The Transcended avatar appeared to blink in genuine astonishment. Her hold on the virt-prison weakened slightly.

  ‘You planned this?’ she said.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Will. ‘But all of me is pissed at you. And all of us want to live. What did you expect?’

  ‘This is awful,’ the Transcended told him. ‘You’re risking the human race, not to mention your own kind.’

  ‘Then give me the truth!’ Will demanded.

  The avatar scowled at him. ‘You don’t want it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I want, you galactic parasite.’

  ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘Tell me!’ Will roared. ‘You want cooperation? Reveal your agenda. That’s my price. And make it quick. That battle’s getting awfully hot.’

  ‘Once you know, there will be no unknowing.’

  ‘Nothing about my existence since you bastards showed up has been comfortable,’ said Will. ‘Why should it start now?’

  ‘Your choice,’ said the Transcended with a very dark smile.

  She held out a pitch-black icon. Will picked it up and tossed it back without hesitation, screening it for malware five billion different ways as he did so. There was none. Inside lay only cold, clear knowledge.

  Will saw.

  The Photes were a training tool. Humanity was being shaped. A Photised race became a reflection of the one it had been drawn from – a weapon that evolved to match and oppress the original species. As the species got stronger or weaker, the Photes changed via their own pattern of acquisition and decay to remain a suitable challenge.

  Phote cellular code operated more like human software than a real biology, and that was by design. When a species was Photised, its cellular mechanisms were rewritten in a more compact format. That simple act of data compression altered the mutative landscape. Thus, when dissent or mutation occurred in a Photised species, the change was almost always deleterious. There wasn’t enough redundancy in the structure for it to safely change. Photised species decayed harmlessly, producing fresh biospheres along the way where new life could start.

  Will’s fury got the better of him. Learning halted.

  ‘Assholes!’ he snarled. ‘I knew it. You’re breeding us for laughs, you sick fucks. You turned billions of people into lifeless puppets!’

  ‘Attend to the rest of the download,’ the Transcended told him. ‘Listen and learn before you judge.’

  With difficulty, Will bit down on his disgust and kept going.

  The result of Phote-training was a species under persistent existential threat. That threat consolidated it into a mature, coherent, sentient civilisation. In other words: a galactic citizen. And this transformation was necessary for participation in the galactic good.

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Will.

  ‘Keep learning,’ said the Transcended.

  That galactic good involved endless competition with the other galaxies of the universe, conducted via patterns of inter-singularity entanglement of immense complexity. It meant near-endless life in perpetual struggle, where only fused, self-aware species had the strength and intelligence to participate. The galaxies themselves served as crèches, bringing forth race after race, isolated in invisibly enclosed patches of space where their development could be tweaked to maximise yield.

  ‘So what?’ said Will. ‘We’re being made into soldiers for your everlasting war? That’s better, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said the Transcended and pushed the downloa
d back into motion.

  The struggle existed, they showed him, because it was the only stable solution for coexistence on universal scales. All life was cooperation happening against a backdrop of competition, from the first moments of molecular abiogenesis up to the largest civilised structures in the universe. That competition was necessary because it was the only viable check on corruption from within.

  ‘This is how life works,’ they told him, and he understood.

  Genes battled transposons among their own number. Bodies fought cancer. Communities fought crime. World governments fought rogue banks. It only worked because there was pressure to cooperate from without. Those entities that gave in to graft collapsed into decay. Those that looked after their own grew and prospered, defeating their more corrupt neighbours.

  ‘This is why humans have love and the will to do good,’ they told him. ‘That is why you were ready to offer yourself up to Snakepit. That passion didn’t come from nowhere and it’s not magic. Love is not irrational. It exists for a reason.’

  Will’s joined mind slowed in astonishment as the full scale of the symmetry became clear to him. Cooperation was life. Competition gave it shape. Everything that lived and self-organised was driven by the same inexorable process, informed by molecular noise at the nano-scale. The truth was written billions of times over in the tiniest droplet of pond water, yet humanity had never fully noticed.

  ‘Even for molecules,’ Will said in awe.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Even there. Agency is not a requirement. Neither are genes. This pattern grows from the root of matter itself, wherever room for shared benefit exists. The result, at the highest level of organisation, is us. But if a species realises they’re being manipulated to this end, the probability of a good outcome degrades. They play to that goal and so fail. If the Photes are infected with doubt, the same thing happens. That’s why we would rather see your friends die than let you poison Nada Rien. They are but individuals. You risk murdering humanity.’