Morgan
The Morgan didn’t have actual viewports, not ones you could look through. Of course it didn’t; it was a warship, designed to withstand nuclear blasts, hypervelocity impacts and intense energy beam assaults. But during the voyage home, everyone realized they wanted to see the world that was legend, not just watch a projection of it, however excellent the resolution. So during the hiatus when the armada emerged from the wormhole at the L-class star that used to be the Olyix sensor station, a slight redesign was instigated. A curving transparent blister now rose out of the smooth hull, as if it was beset with a tumour.
Kandara waited until the first rush of sightseers had all had their fill of the system’s eerie blue ice giant before she ventured a look. The observation lounge was spartan compared to the rest of the starship’s quarters with their texture surfaces. She couldn’t really even tell she was inside. The dome was optically perfect, invisible unless a star’s glimmer caught it at an acute angle to create a minute diffraction halo. As far as her natural senses could make out, she was standing on the hull, naked to space.
The armada ships and their appropriated Olyix arkships were orbiting the star’s solitary ice giant – thousands of light points forming a slender ring a million kilometres above the frigid cloudscape. She watched the dull, slow-moving hurricanes of ammonia crystals swirling gently so far over her head, occasionally harassed by the flicker of lightning blasts. That was when she started working out the scale. Some of those storm swirls were the same size as South America, which meant the speed they were spinning wasn’t so sluggish after all. And as for the power in each lightning bolt . . .
She heard footsteps approaching, someone deliberately making their presence known. So someone who knew not to creep up on her. ‘Hello, Yuri.’ She hadn’t seen much of her fellow Saints during the trip back down the wormhole; not that they’d sought her out, either. A welcome break.
Thanks to the slow time flow within the Morgan, it had only taken a week to get here. She’d spent most of it with Dellian’s squad – nice kids who were starting to relax properly for the first time in their lives. Like her, they didn’t know what the hell they were going to do now, which made them all kindred souls.
‘Quite a view,’ Yuri said as he stood beside her.
‘Not really, but it’s the first time I’ve actually seen the outside in ten thousand years. We were in Kruse Station for so long before the flight, then everything since we left has been a sensor feed into my neural interface. This viewing dome is an anachronism; sensors provide a much better view, and in higher resolution. But, Mary, this, this is real. It helps to ground me.’
‘Yeah, that many ships does put everything into perspective, doesn’t it?’
Kandara nodded as she shifted her gaze to the long loop of glowing dots that arched sedately around the ice giant. The closest was a large one: the Salvation of Life itself. She had very mixed feelings about that. ‘Yeah. Here we are, back in a parking orbit right beside that bastard. Some rescue, huh?’
‘A necessary step in the journey. I’ve been talking to Immanueel and Yirella. There is some debate as to what we should do next.’
‘I thought that was settled. We’re going back to Earth, aren’t we?’
‘We are. Before the armada left, the corpus people dispatched several wormhole-carrying ships back there. More are now on their way to the original settled stars.’
‘There’s an unspoken but in there somewhere, Yuri.’
‘The corpus humans have catalogued the arkships and Welcome ships we brought with us. There are six thousand four hundred and twenty-three alien species in various kinds of stasis.’
‘Various kinds?’
‘Yes. There’s one that is entirely unhatched eggs – millions of them. Their world was in an elliptical orbit that lasts forty-five terrestrial years; so every generation lived for about thirty years then died off at the onset of winter after they laid their eggs. All the Olyix had to do was drop in after winter started and scoop them up.’
‘That sounds . . . bizarre. How did they ever discover radio in thirty years?’
‘Nature, it turns out, is quite neat. Apparently the egg yolk is some kind of chemical memory extruded by a gland in the adult brain. The embryos absorb it as they grow. So once they hatch, they simply move into the buildings their ancestors left behind, and have all the knowledge to make everything work. They understand science, too, and carry on the research.’
‘Okay, I’ll give you that one: It is neat.’
‘Another one is a cold-blooded race that the Olyix have literally frozen in liquid nitrogen under extreme pressure. Then there’s one that—’
‘Yuri, I don’t need a rundown of all six thousand species, thanks. What’s the debate?’
‘We have to decide where to send them.’
‘Ah.’
‘It’s going to take ten thousand years for the starships to reach Earth, so we certainly have time to decide.’
‘Now I get it. We need to evaluate each species and decree which ones we want living near human worlds. Oh, and I’m guessing what level of technology we provide, too?’
‘Right. Some may be hostile. We have to be careful. In which case, we don’t bring them out of stasis before we re-establish human society.’
‘Because they’d have ten thousand years to advance their own technology . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I appreciate the thinking behind that. After all, another century and Earth would probably have been able to take on the Olyix. So who is going to make all these evaluations?’
Yuri gave her a modest shrug. ‘Immanueel is concerned that it shouldn’t just be corpus humans. It’ll be a council, with people revived from various arkships and eras. Yirella, of course. And Jessika should be able to bring a decent new perspective.’
‘Council? I think you mean a bureaucracy, don’t you?’
‘I found it quite reassuring. Even corpus humans, faced with a problem, instinctively form a committee.’
‘Presumably you’re going to be on it?’
‘I was asked. I have spent a lifetime in security, after all. And so have you.’
‘What? Oh, no. No. That’s not the mission I signed on for. I’ve done my part.’
‘And in doing so, built yourself a reputation: Saint Kandara. You know no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Besides, what else are you going to do for the next ten thousand years?’
‘A time I fully intend to spend in a corpus domain with an exceedingly slow time flow.’
Yuri’s lips flickered with a smile. ‘Saint Callum’s already agreed.’
‘Mary, colour me surprised. And Yirella? You said she’s on this committee?’
‘Yes.’ Yuri gave her a shrewd look. ‘Why? Don’t you trust her?’
‘Sure. I trust her.’
‘See, this is the kind of instinct we need on the committee.’
‘It’s not instinct, it’s . . .’
‘Prejudice?’
‘Fuck you. But have you noticed how everything Yirella suggests is inevitably what happens?’
‘Because she’s smart.’
‘So are corpus humans.’
‘They do have a reverence for her that I find a little disturbing. It’ll be good to have someone like you to act as a balance to her.’
‘Oh, Mary.’
‘Excellent. First meeting is in two days’ time. The species catalogue is available for you to access.’
‘You expect me to review six thousand four hundred species in forty-eight hours?’
‘They’re grouped into preliminary categories. But I expect we’ll be spending the first dozen sessions arguing what we do with the ones we really don’t want in a neighbouring star system.’
‘Sure.’
‘Then we have to decide what kind of human culture we want to establish when we do return everyone to Earth. With the power that corpus-level technology gives us, there will have to be restrictions on individual usage.’
Kandara just glared at him, not trusting herself to speak. As always, she wondered just how effective her gland was. ‘Right,’ she snapped.
‘Face it, who else would you trust with this? We are Saints, after all.’