sentences:  They explore the "Hideyoshi" and find it abandoned, learning that Markarian has been physically absorbed by the medichines sustaining him in his old age, and exists now only as a collection of software servers which simulate his behaviour.They collect the remaining colonists (whom Markarian has stored as alpha-level neural scans plus complete genetic archives) and prepare to leave the galaxy to re-establish a new civilisation elsewhere, fleeing just ahead of an immense nebular swarm of Greenfly machines which had homed in on "Hope" as it fled the galactic plane.The novel "Absolution Gap" contains a reference to entities in a parallel universe (or at least claiming to be from one) facing attack from an agent very similar to the Greenfly.