Yes, war was inevitable. Too many wanted it too badly. But it did strike me as ironic that the triggering incident was a Xeelee action concerned with a different war entirely, a war in which we were always bystanders - a war which would one day overwhelm all of us.

With the final conflict begun at last, the Galaxy-spanning civilisation of mankind underwent a drastic reconfiguration. For millennia, under the Coalition, it had been a machine for expansion and conquest. Now it became a machine of war.

Humanity resplendent. We undying hid away, waiting for the storm to pass.

And human hearts, evolved for a long-forgotten savannah, had to adapt to the dilemmas of interstellar battlefields.

PART FOUR - RESPLENDENT

PART FOUR

RESPLENDENT

THE CHOP LINE - AD 20,424

THE CHOP LINE

AD 20,424

I

We’d had no warning of the wounded Spline ship’s return to Base 592, in the heart of the Galaxy.

Return: if you could call it that. But this was before I understood that every faster-than-light spaceship is also a time machine. That kind of puzzling would come later. For now, I just had my duty to perform.

As it happened we were off the Base at the time, putting the Admiral Kard through its paces after a refit and bedding in a new crew. Kard is a corvette: a small, mobile yacht intended for close-in sublight operations. I was twenty years old, still an ensign, assigned for that jaunt as an assistant to Exec Officer Baras. My first time on a bridge, it was quite an experience, and I was glad of the company of Tarco, an old cadre sibling, even if he was a male and a lard bucket. In cold Galaxy-centre light we had just run through a tough sequence of speed runs, emergency turns, full backdown, instrument checks, fire and damage control.

It was thanks to our fortuitous station on the bridge that Tarco and I were among the first to see the injured ship as it downfolded out of hyperspace. It was a Navy ship - a Spline, of course, a living ship, like a great meaty eyeball. It just appeared out of nowhere. We were close enough to see the green tetrahedral sigil etched into its flesh. But you couldn’t miss the smoking ruins of the weapons emplacements, and a great open rent in the hull, thick with coagulated blood. A swarm of lesser lights, huddling close, looked like escape pods.

The whole bridge crew fell silent.

‘Lethe,’ Tarco whispered. ‘Where did that come from?’ We didn’t know of any action underway at the time.

But we had no time to debate it.

Captain Iana’s voice sounded around the corvette. ‘That ship is the Assimilator’s Torch,’ he announced. ‘She’s requesting help. You can all see her situation. Stand by your stations.’ He began to snap out brisk orders to his heads of department.