Chapter 43

The monstrous swelling of the age of inflation was over.

The universe continued to expand, more sedately than before, but relentlessly. Still phase changes occurred, as the merged forces broke up further, and with each loss of symmetry more energy was injected into the expansion.

The release of the electromagnetic force from its prison of symmetry was particularly spectacular, for suddenly it was possible for light to exist. The universe lit up in a tremendous flash — and space filled immediately with a bath of searing radiation. So energetically dense was this first exuberant glow that it continually coalesced into specks of matter — quarks and antiquarks, electrons and positrons — that would almost as rapidly annihilate each other. There were no atoms yet, though, no molecules. Indeed, temperatures were too high for the quarks to combine into anything as sedate as a proton.

The primordial black holes, surviving from the age of spacetime chemistry, again provided some structure in this seething chaos; passing through the glowing soup they would gather clusters of quarks or anti-quarks. Though the quarks themselves continually melted away, the structure of these clusters persisted; and in those structures were encoded information. Interactions became complex. Networks and loops of reactions formed, some were reinforced by feedback loops.

Certain consequences inevitably followed. For this universe it was already an old story — but it was a new generation of life.

But this was a universe of division. For every particle of matter created there was an antimatter twin. If they met they would mutually annihilate immediately. It was only chance local concentrations of matter, or antimatter, that enabled any structures to form at all.

In these intertwined worlds of matter and antimatter, parallel societies formed. Never able to touch, able to watch each other only from afar, they nevertheless made contact, exchanging information and images, science and art, reciprocally influencing each other at every stage. Mirror-image cultures evolved, each seeking to ape the achievements of the unreachable other. There were wars too, but these were always so devastating for both sides that mutual deterrence became the only possible option. Even a few impossible, unrequitable parity-spanning love affairs were thrown up.

The fundamental division of the world was seen as essentially tragic, and inspired many stories.

The various matter species, meanwhile, were not the only inhabitants of this ferocious age. They shared their radiation bath with much more ancient life-forms. To the survivors of the spacetime- chemistry federation, this age of an endless radiation storm was cold, chill, empty, the spacetime defects which characterized their kind scattered and stretched to infinity. But survive they had. Slowly they moved out of their arks and sought new ways to live.

Chapter 44

In the end it took a whole week before Pirius had assembled his team of thirty, including himself and Torec, to serve as primary crew, and nine more as backups. But now there were only seven weeks left before Kimmer’s deadline, and serious work on training and development hadn’t even begun.

Pirius brought his recruits, from Quin and elsewhere, back to Rock 492. Even that was a budget operation; he and Pila had to scrounge spare spaces on scheduled transport ships.

On the journey back from Quin, he couldn’t avoid his other self; whenever they passed each other, their tense silence was chill. Everybody stared, fascinated.

Once back at 492, Red called Burden and Pirius Blue to the office he had had Pila set up. They stood side by side, at attention, but somehow Blue made his insolence show.

“I need two flight commanders,” Pirius Red said without preamble. “So you can guess why I called you here.”

Burden and Pirius Blue glanced at each other.

Burden frowned. Again he seemed oddly evasive. But he said, “It’s not a responsibility I want. But I wouldn’t turn it down.”

Pirius Red nodded. He turned to Blue. “And you?”

Blue was contemptuous. “Do I have a choice?”

Red snapped angrily, “More choice than you gave me when you came back from that magnetar. Look, from my point of view neither of you are ideal candidates. Burden, frankly, I’m suspicious of what’s going on in your head.” Burden looked away. “And Blue — I know you too well, and we’ll never get on. But I need you both; you’re the best I can find. Blue, you of all people know that.”

He waited. At length, Burden accepted the job, but distantly. Blue nodded curtly.

Red was relieved beyond words.

Now he was able to bring both Blue and Burden further into his confidence. All they had known up to this point, like the other candidates, was that the mission would involve difficult flying with novel technology. He began to explain what the target would be.

“You’re insane,” said Pirius Blue. “We’re going to strike at Chandra itself?” But Red saw that his eyes were alive with excitement.

Red said carefully, “You want me to take you off the mission? I could do that, though you know too much now; you’d have to be kept in custody until the flight was over.”

“And let somebody else fly this?” Blue grinned; he looked feral. “Not a chance.”

Pirius turned to Burden. “What about you?”

Burden seemed more troubled. “This could shorten the war.”

“Or lengthen it,” Blue said, “if it goes wrong badly enough.”

“Either way,” said Burden, “things must change.”

Pirius nodded. “Does that trouble you?”

“Whatever we do doesn’t matter. Not in the long run. And it’s a noble action.”

Pirius had trouble decoding this glimpse of an alien mindset. “Does that mean you’re in?”

Again Pirius perceived a flash of fear. Blue saw it, too, and glanced at Burden, worried.

But Burden straightened his shoulders. “Yes, sir!”

Once the last transport had docked, Pirius Red brought his recruits to 492’s largest pressurized dome and had them draw up in good order before him. With Pila at his side, he stood awkwardly on a crate, the only rostrum he could find.

He looked along their lines, at Jees’s clunky artificial torso, at the anomalously old, like Burden, at damaged children like Three — and, Lethe, at his own sullen, other-timeline face. He found it hard to believe that there had been such a rabble drawn up anywhere on the Front in all this war’s long history.

Nevertheless they were a squadron, and they were his.

“Forty of us,” he said. “Forty, including Pila, here, my adjutant. And this is our base. It isn’t much, but it’s ours. And we’re about to be transferred into Strike Arm. We’re a squadron now. And we’re special,” he said.

There was a guffaw, quickly suppressed.

“So we are,” Pirius went on. “We are a special generation, with a special duty, a privilege. The Galaxy-center engagement with the Xeelee began three thousand years ago. And we are the first generation in all those long years to have a chance of winning this war — of winning the Galaxy itself. Whether we succeed or we fail, they will remember us, in the barracks-rooms and the shipyards and the training grounds, and on the battlefields, for a long time to come.”

The crews just stood silently and stared back at him. His words had sounded empty, even to him. His self-doubt quickly gathered.

Enduring Hope spoke up. “We need a name.”

“What’s that?”

“A name. For the squadron. Every squadron needs a name.”

Pila murmured a suggestion in his ear, and he knew it was right. “Exultant,” he said. “We are Exultant Squadron.”