Salvation of Life
Callum was trying to keep his cool. Not easy. He’d been tense for so long now that he was frightened any attempt to relax and go with the flow would make him cry. Not that it mattered, because no one would see it. Nothing human. Or nothing he recognized as human, anyway.
Kandara had led a squad of invasion soldiers to the cave – two types in frankly terrifying exoskeleton armour. The first were human-ish, with limbs that had too many joints, while the second were a pack of demonic robot warriors arisen from nightmares. Both were too big to get in through the gap in the tunnel wall unless they ripped the rock apart. By the look of their suit limbs, they probably didn’t even need weapons to do that.
His arm was throbbing badly by then – the kind of drug-dulled pain that was frightening because the sedative couldn’t eliminate it. And the ridiculous balloon Jessika had fabricated in the initiator made it look like he’d got his arm stuck inside a beach ball.
The squad escorted them to the hangar, where a ship from the human armada was waiting. Their leader was called Dellian, whose voice over the radio came over as a strange mix of teenage excitement and religious reverence. And why the bloody hell does he keep calling us Saints?
That question died on Callum’s lips when he saw the hangar. The firefight had left it strewn with the wreckage of busted capturesnakes and huntspheres that’d been cracked open like metallic eggs – eggs whose insides were a churn of molten metal and plastic . . . and charred quint flesh.
It was a vivid contrast going into the troop carrier, which was like being inside a machine where every surface had been coated in black chrome. But when the airlock sealed and the atmosphere came up to pressure, Dellian sank to his first set of knees, and the top of his armour hinged up.
Callum studied the young man intently; there was something not quite right about the features that he couldn’t define. Head too . . . wide? Or maybe the thick neck was too short? He gave up trying to work it out and unlocked his own helmet.
‘It’s really you,’ Dellian said. ‘Saint Callum.’
Yuri and the others took their helmets off, and Dellian stared around with a dazed expression, then started crying.
‘Come on,’ an embarrassed Callum said. ‘We’re not that bad looking.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Dellian said, grimacing as if he was in pain. ‘I saw the Avenging Heretic explode. We thought you were all dead.’
‘You saw it?’ a frowning Jessika asked.
‘Yeah. I kind of got neurovirused by a onemind. That image was part of breaking me.’
‘Well, fuck,’ Yuri grunted. ‘So you’ve been fighting the Olyix for a while, then?’
‘All my life. All of us have. And you were our inspiration, the five of you – our Saints. What you did, sacrificing everything to challenge the Olyix, it has been our guidance since our ancestors fled Earth. I’m so sorry we didn’t get here in time to save Saint Alik.’
‘Saint Alik,’ Kandara said with a wry smirk. ‘How about that?’
‘You know what he’d say about it, don’t you?’ Yuri said.
‘What?’ Dellian asked.
‘He’d be very honoured,’ Callum said quickly, before Yuri could reveal Alik’s true opinion.
‘Uh, we need to get you to the Morgan now,’ Dellian said. ‘It’ll be safer for you, and Saint Callum can get his arm treated in one of our clinics. I have to go and lead my squad into the Salvation of Life. We’re part of the clean-out phase.’
‘Clean-out?’
Dellian’s guileless face hardened. ‘Yirella is dealing with the onemind, but we’re going to exterminate the quint on board.’
Callum shrugged, which made him wince. ‘Okay then.’
A portal expanded at the far end of the cluttered chamber. ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ Dellian said. ‘Afterwards. If you don’t mind.’
‘Sure.’
So they went through the portal. It was like walking back into a corporate headquarters, though perhaps the walls were whiter than any Connexion office block, the air filtering not so sterile. And the people . . . who weren’t people, in the biological sense. They were greeted by epicene androids with black skin, a good half-metre taller than even Yuri. The androids were all called Yirella, which didn’t help clarify anything. But they showed Callum and the others to a clinic. That at least was reassuringly normal, though the medical equipment was a lot smaller and sleeker than anything he’d seen before.
Several other bays were occupied. Callum was sitting on a bed opposite a pair of amazingly old women. Even back on Earth in his time, only the poorest people had ever looked that old.
‘What happened to them?’ he asked the two androids helping to remove his spacesuit.
‘Victims of war,’ one of the androids replied. ‘Fighting the Olyix meant a lot of sacrifices. I wasn’t expecting it to be so . . . brutal. It has been very personal for me.’
‘Yeah. I’m starting to realize just how much I’ve left behind. We really are time travellers, aren’t we?’
The Yirella android who had just removed the protective balloon from his arm nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Though it is a one-way trip, I’m afraid,’ she said.
Callum couldn’t actually look at his arm; the damage and protruding bone made him feel sick. Another android appeared, white, and smaller than the black ones, with an anatomy that was definitely male. It even wore a pair of green shorts. It was holding a long blue sleeve that looked as if it had been knitted out of fat silk.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, then looked at the android’s face. ‘Ainsley?’
‘Not any more,’ the white android said. ‘Sorry, I’m also Yirella. I just thought it would be more reassuring for you to have a familiar-looking aspect in a medical environment. This must all be very disorienting.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re not wrong there. This – none of this – is how I expected our mission to end.’
‘What were you expecting?’
‘Not to get this far, frankly. I’m still suspicious that this is a dream, and my brain is really in an Olyix cocoon.’
‘Trust me, you’re not.’
He lay back as the android with Ainsley’s face gently slipped the blue sleeve over his arm, plugging its tubes and cables into a silver pillar at the top of the bed. His phantom pain finally vanished as the sleeve inflated; he sighed in relief. The tubes began to sway as fluids flowed along them. One was a horrible brown colour. He looked away again.
‘So what happens now?’ he asked.
‘My other aspects are dealing with the Salvation of Life onemind.’
‘Dealing with?’
‘Killing it. I need to take control of the Salvation’s main systems so we can maintain the cocoons.’
‘There are other arkships carrying human cocoons. Five, I think.’
‘I know. The armada is already engaging them, as it is all the Olyix ships here. There are thousands of different species imprisoned in cocoons or their equivalent. We have to save them all. It is our duty and honour to do so. We’re going to take them all with us, back across the galaxy to the expansion wavefront.’
That took Callum a moment to process. ‘Do you have that kind of . . . capacity?’
‘Just. We have taken more losses than expected. But the corpus armada prevails. An aspect will replace each onemind.’
‘Er, aspect?’
‘Corpus humans are people who have divided their minds into many aspects, each of which resides in a different vessel – biological bodies, quantum arrays, machines, warships . . .’
‘Androids.’ He was having trouble accepting what she was saying. Too much strangeness.
‘Some, yes. Now their aspects are starting to occupy the arkships as their oneminds are eliminated. And very soon we will have to leave.’
‘I know; you brought a neutron star with you. It’s going to hit this star, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. And it will soon turn nova, which in turn will trigger its twin. There is an eighty-two per cent chance the two combined will produce a supernova. It is our moral obligation to ensure none of the Olyix’s victims are left behind.’
‘I’m bloody glad to hear that. You’re frighteningly advanced, so it’s comforting to know you put so much emphasis on ethics. They are so easy to abandon in times of war.’
‘I am pleased I can reassure you. We owe you so much.’
‘Not really. The Signal we sent won’t reach Earth for another forty thousand years. So many people sacrificed so much to get us here. The gamble we took . . . And in the end, you found your way here without us.’ Callum found his throat was all hot and tight; tears were building in his eyes. Stupid, but . . . This life he was now living was not something he had ever expected. In so many ways it was an afterlife now, forever separated from those people he’d loved and lived with. He began to laugh, which turned into sobs.
The white android’s hand touched his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah. I think reality is catching up with me. I’ve just realized the only contemporaries I’ve got left in this brave new world are Yuri, Kandara and Jessika. Bloody hell: the relic squad.’
‘The living are not relics. And you will soon be joined by billions from your own time. You are going home, Saint Callum. And when you do, you and the other Saints will be revered on the Earth rebuilt, along with every human world we settle.’
‘For what?’ It came out with more bitterness than he expected – or wanted.
‘You guided us here, Callum, you and your fellow Saints. You are the star we followed into the night. You are the heroes from our deepest legends. We – me, the squad you met, all the other squads who have travelled across half the galaxy to be here – we were all born for this one moment. How do you think we felt when we heard Saint Kandara’s voice and followed her broadcast here to the Salvation of Life itself, the greatest evil humans have known? The legend of you gave my generation the most precious gift ever, as it gave all the exodus generations before us. You gave us hope, Saint Callum. And we were right to believe in you, for none of you gave up, did you? You did your duty right to the end. Can you imagine how profound that is to those of us living through what has become the end of days?’
‘I didn’t ask for any of this, you know,’ he said meekly.
‘I know. None of us did. And possibly for the first time in my life, I am glad I exist. Because of you, Saint Callum. You are the reason I live. You are my life’s validation. Thank you.’
‘You’re very welcome. But I’ve got to warn you, we do not deserve your admiration.’
‘We’ll see. Even with a wormhole that’ll take us to within ten thousand lightyears of Sol and the old settled worlds, it’s going to be a long voyage.’
‘Back to Earth,’ he said in wonder. ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’
‘Yes. Effectively, this part of the war is over. We’ve won. Humans now possess the only wormhole leading away from this star system. It’s the one that brought us here, and it’s currently accelerating away faster than any of the Olyix ships pursuing it. They can’t catch it now.’
‘But we can?’
‘Oh, yes. A lot of very smart people put this campaign together.’
‘I look forward to meeting them.’ He hesitated as his arm began to itch under the blue medical sleeve. ‘We’re really going to go home?’
‘Yes.’