And then sleep engulfed him, shutting out the light of the war.

The seed inadvertently planted by Dolo and others, in allowing the soldiers’ new religion to survive, took a long time to bear fruit.

In the meantime Luca was right. Humanity had to find a way to win its war before it lost through sheer exhaustion. It was through the slow sedition of Luca and others like him that the victory came about.

But it would take two more bloody millennia before the heroics of what became known as the ‘Exultant generation’ broke the logjam of the Front, and mankind’s forces swept on into the Core itself.

I had a small part to play in that victory. We undying, hidden away, have sometimes seen fit to steer human history. With patience you can make a difference. But mayflies, blind to the long term, are impossible to herd. You never get everything you want.

Still, a victory.

Suddenly the Galaxy was human.

Victorious child soldiers peered around at what they had won, uncomprehending, and wondered what to do next.

Mankind sought new purposes.

For the first time in many millennia voyages of discovery, not conquest, were launched. Some even sailed beyond the Galaxy itself.

And even there they found relics of mankind’s complicated history.

Some were almost as old as I am.

PART FIVE - THE SHADOW OF EMPIRE

PART FIVE

THE SHADOW OF EMPIRE

MAYFLOWER II - AD 5420-24,974

MAYFLOWER II

AD 5420-24,974

I

Twenty days before the end of his world, Rusel heard that he was to be saved.

‘Rusel. Rusel . . .’ The whispered voice was insistent. Rusel rolled over, trying to shake off the effects of his usual mild sedative. The room responded to his movement, and soft light coalesced around him. His pillow was soaked with sweat.

His brother’s face was hovering in the air at the side of his bed. Diluc was grinning. The Virtual image made his face look even wider than usual, his nose more prominent.

‘Lethe,’ Rusel said hoarsely. ‘You ugly bastard.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ Diluc said. ‘I’m sorry to wake you. But I just heard - you need to know—’

‘Know what?’

‘Blen showed up in the infirmary.’ Blen was the nanochemist assigned to Ship Three. ‘Get this: he has a heart murmur.’ Diluc’s grin returned.

Rusel frowned. ‘For that you woke me up? Poor Blen.’

‘It’s not that serious. But, Rus - it’s congenital.’

The sedative dulled Rusel’s thinking, and it took him a moment to figure it out.

The five Ships were to evacuate the last, brightest hopes of Port Sol from the path of the incoming peril, the forces of the young Coalition. But they were slower-than-light transports, and would take many centuries to reach their destinations. Only the healthiest, in body and genome, could be allowed aboard a generation starship. And if Blen had a hereditary heart condition—

‘He’s off the Ship,’ Rusel breathed.