by Ben Bova
“No! She loves me.”
“Perhaps once she did. But she has outgrown you, outgrown the foolish desire to take on human form. She is truly the goddess of death, Orion. Your death. Believe it.”
Chapter 14
For the next several days, as I worked with the human scientists, my mind kept spinning around the revelations that Aten had heaped upon me.
Anya was fighting against the Golden One. The Creators were split apart, and they had split the human race into two warring factions. They had even enlisted alien races in their ever-expanding war.
And Anya no longer loved me. That I refused to believe. She might hate Aten, she might be fighting against the Golden One with every quantum of her strength and knowledge, but she would never turn against me.
Yet I was a soldier in Aten’s army. War washes sentiment away in torrents of blood. I could be killed as impersonally as a man swats an insect, light-years away from her, and she would never know it. I would be merely another casualty among the Creators’ human pawns.
No! I could not accept that, could not believe it. Anya loves me, we have loved each other across the millennia and the light-years of space-time. She still loves me, just as I love her.
Can I find her? Can I reach her, wherever she is? Why must I fight this senseless war on Aten’s side, instead of hers?
These were the thoughts that flooded my mind as I dutifully tried to help the human scientists at the Skorpis base on Lunga. In vain.
They had been sent to Lunga to establish contact with the Old Ones and enlist their aid in the interstellar war. The planet’s only strategic value was that the Old Ones had a settlement here. My mission, at Aten’s devious direction, had been to prevent the Hegemony from making an alliance with the Old Ones while he tried to establish contact with them himself.
My mission seemed oddly successful. The Old Ones refused to have any form of contact at all with the Hegemony scientists. We swam in the ocean for days and even had a full-sized submersible sent down to the Skorpis base. But no matter how far we went into that ocean, no matter how deep we dived, we saw no trace of the Old Ones.
“Maybe they’ve left the planet altogether,” Delos suggested gloomily as he bent over the display screens in the cramped sensor center of the sub. Each of the screens showed an ocean teeming with sea life and no trace of the Old Ones.
“You say they had a city down here?” Randa asked me. In the confines of the sub’s compartment we were practically pressing against one another. I could smell the faint trace of perfume in her hair. And a musky odor of perspiration.
Nodding, I replied, “A big city, although it really was more of a collection of lights than a set of structures.”
“Well, there’s no lights nor structures anywhere in view,” Delos said with an exasperated sigh.
“Perhaps the sensors are being blocked in some way,” I suggested. “Screened.”
We sent out swimmers. I went out myself. Nothing. It was as if the Old Ones had never been there. Yet I got the distinct feeling that they were nearby, watching us, perhaps amused by our frustration.
The one good thing that I was able to accomplish during those discouraging days was to get better quarters for my troopers. I refused to be housed with the scientists, insisting that I was a soldier and I would share the treatment the other prisoners received. At the same time I pleaded with Delos and the Skorpis base commander, whenever I was brought to her presence, for a roof over the prisoners’ compound.
One morning, just as I was about to be escorted to the scientists’ buildings again, a Skorpis skimmer pulled up at the gate of the prison compound, loaded with sheets of plastic and bags of connectors.
“You will build yourselves a shelter,” said the sergeant who drove the skimmer. “No tools are needed. Get to work.”
By the time I returned that evening the shelter stood, neat and square. There was even bedding inside, I saw.
“Now we need partitions,” Frede told me, quite seriously. “For privacy.”
It astounded me how the troopers could adapt to their situation. They had slept on the bare ground and eaten one thin meal a day and been grateful that they were still alive.
“Now we need to escape,” I said back to her. “Before they put us all in their larder.”
Her eyes widened.
“To the Skorpis,” I told her, “prisoners are food. The only reason we haven’t been frozen so far is that the scientists want me to work with them and I told them that the price of my cooperation is to keep all of you alive.”
“But as long as you work with the scientists…”
I had to tell her, “I don’t think it’s going to be much longer. They’re coming to the conclusion that there’s nothing they can do to reach the Old Ones.”
“Then we’ve got to get out of here pretty quickly.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But how?”
That was a problem without a solution that I could find. There were forty-nine of us, unarmed, under constant watch, in the middle of a camp of at least a thousand Skorpis. I racked my brain for days on end trying to come up with a plan that might have some faint chance of working. Nothing.
Until one night it hit me. We don’t need to escape. We need to be rescued.
I lay on the plastic floor of our prison, Frede next to me, staring up at the blank ceiling. I still had no clothes except the shorts I had been wearing for weeks. I closed my eyes and called silently to Aten.
There was no answer. Nor had I expected one, at first. Summoning up my will and my memory, I translated myself to the empty city of the Creators and stood once again beneath the warm sun on the hillside overlooking the city and the sea.
To those who can manipulate space-time, it matters little if you are in a certain place for a moment or a millennium. You can always return to the place and the time where you started.
“I can wait,” I called the cloud-flecked blue sky. “I can wait as long as you can.”
I did not have to wait long. Almost immediately a silver glowing sphere appeared before me, so bright I could not look at it, yet I felt no heat from its brilliance. It coalesced, took the form of a man. The Creator whom I thought of as Hermes: dark-haired, lean, the hint of mischief in his ebony eyes.
“Orion, the disturbance you make in the continuum is like a toothache.”
“When did you ever experience a toothache?” I countered.
He grinned at me. “What is it? What brings you here all hot and impatient?”
“Are you part of this interstellar war?” I asked.
“Of course. We all are.”
“And whose side are you on?”
His trickster’s face took on a sly, cunning look. “Does it make a difference to you?”
“Can you take me to Anya?”
He thought a moment, then shook his head. “Better not to, Orion. She bears the weight of our future on her shoulders. She would not be glad to see either one of us.”
“You serve the Golden One, then.”
“I serve no one!” he blazed. “I have put in my lot on Aten’s side, though, that is true.”
“Then tell him that he must rescue my troop from the Skorpis base on Lunga.”
“Tell him that he must? By your word?”
“If he expects me to serve him further,” I said.
Hermes actually blinked at me. “You bargain with your Creator?”
I smiled back at him. “No, you bargain with him. I must return to my troopers.”
And I opened my eyes in the prison shack at the Skorpis base, with Frede sleeping soundly beside me.
The rescue attempt, when it came, was just as fouled up as every other aspect of our mission to Lunga.
It was early afternoon. I was out in the submersible with nine of the other human scientists, including Delos—who went on every cruise—and Randa, who still seemed hostile and distant most of the time, although she could thaw slightly, especially when there was some interesting science to talk about.
The Skorpis warrior who accompanied us, so big that he could barely squeeze through the sub’s hatches, filled the tiny comm compartment with his bulk. If humans felt uncomfortably dwarfed in Skorpis furniture, this warrior seemed ridiculous with a comm set clamped to his furry head. It was designed for human ears and human dimensions, but the warrior had managed to get the earphone to stay in his cuplike ear by slapping a strip of gummy tape across his head. It must have hurt when he pulled it off. I could see the pale scars of earlier tapes etched into his greenish fur.
“Return to base,” he rumbled.
Delos, in the next compartment bent over the sensor displays, jerked his head up so suddenly he banged it on the metal overhead.
He yelped with pain, then said, “Return? Why?”
“Orders,” answered the Skorpis.
Rubbing his head, Delos reached an arm into the comm compartment. “Please give me the other headset.”
The Skorpis warrior complied and Delos held the set against his ear. Standing next to him, I could hear the communications operator on the other end.
“Enemy fleet has been observed approaching the planet. Return to base immediately.”
The rescue mission, I thought. My heart began to race.
“But if there’s a battle we’ll be safer here in the sea, submerged, than at the base.”
“Orders are to return to base. Immediately.”
Delos wanted to argue, but the Skorpis at the comm console was already leaning his thick fingers on the keypads that activated the automated controls. We were returning to base, following orders.
And the Golden One was coming to rescue my troopers.
We broke to the surface a scant kilometer from the shore and cruised to the pier. As I clambered through the topside hatch and out onto the sub’s deck, I could see no action. The sky looked clear and serene. But there was an air of electrical expectancy at the base that we could all feel as the human scientists who had remained ashore ran out onto the pier and helped tie up the sub.
We rushed back toward the scientists’ compound, escorted by two fully armed warriors who had met us at the pier and the Skorpis who had run the comm console in the sub. His two comrades handed him a rifle and a flexible reflective vest as they ran.
“There’s a shelter beneath the main building,” Delos told me, panting with exertion. “The Skorpis insisted on building it even though I thought it was silly. Shielded and everything.”
I saw that the base was buttoned up, braced for an attack. No one walking about, none of the usual drilling or workaday chores going on. Out by the perimeter the guns were manned. Automated laser batteries were already pointing skyward.
“I’ve got to see to my troopers,” I said.
“Don’t be foolish,” Delos said. “Come with us where you’ll be protected.”
“I belong with my troop.” I veered off, sprinting toward the prison shack.
No Skorpis tried to stop me, although Delos yelled, “Bring them to our shelter if you can.”
I waved and ran faster toward the shack.
It was empty. Had the Skorpis already moved the prisoners to safety? I was surprised, doubtful.
Then I saw, to one side of the shack, a pile of canisters. “No!” I shouted. “They didn’t!”
A high-pitched screeching shrilled through the air, the Skorpis equivalent of a siren, barely audible to a human. The attack was imminent.
No need to count the canisters. I knew what they were. Cryonic containers. The Skorpis had spent the morning freezing my troop. There was a big skimmer parked on the other side of the pile. They were going to move them to their food lockers when the attacking fleet was spotted.
I pounded the side of the flimsy shack hard enough to make it shake down to its plastic foundation. They’re frozen! Frozen!
A heavy hand gripped my shoulder. Turning, I saw it was the security officer.
“Get to shelter,” she commanded. “Attack is starting.”
As she spoke, a rash of laser blasts splashed against the energy dome shielding the base. The usually invisible dome flared flame red for an instant, then orange. It cleared, but I could see it shimmering above us.
“To shelter,” she hissed. “Now.” She wrapped an arm around my waist, lifted me off my feet and started running, carrying me like a sack of groceries.
More laser blasts splashed against the shield, and I heard the lightning cracks of the Skorpis lasers firing back. The whole world shuddered and we were knocked flat as a nuclear warhead hit the base of the shield. The shield absorbed most of the energy, but the kinetic pulse conducted by the ground was like the shock of an earthquake.
I scrambled to my feet; the security officer got to hers a bit more slowly. Through the shimmering shield I could see lights glinting in the sky, far overhead. Our ships, still in orbit, catching the light of the sun up there.
More nukes exploded and we staggered across the base, between buildings that swayed dangerously with each new explosion. The shield was flaming deeper and deeper into the red now, as more laser beams fired against it. It was only a matter of time until the shield was overloaded. Another blast knocked us to the ground again. Dust and grit filled the air, burning my eyes.
Spitting dirt from her begrimed face, the security officer pointed in the direction of the scientists’ compound. “Shelter,” she said. “You go there.”
“What about you?”
“I have duty station.” She hauled herself to her feet and started off in the opposite direction just as another nuke pounded outside the shield, making the shield go black for eons-long moments. The ground shook violently and several buildings collapsed. A heavy support beam cracked loose from one building and fell like an ax across the back of the security officer, flattening her beneath its weight.
I staggered over to her, through the choking dust, as more explosions shook the ground. The shield was visibly wobbling now, blinking red and orange and bubbling like water on the boil.
She was conscious, but barely. The beam had crushed her ribs, maybe broken her back. I strained against it, summoning up every reserve of strength in me, and hauled it off her. It fell to the ground beside us with a thunderous clunk.
I dared not turn her over. Her tunic was a mass of blood from her shoulders to her waist. She lay facedown, one cheek in the dirt, the other caked with grime.
One yellow eye gazed steadily at me. “You do not follow orders,” she muttered.
“I’ll get help.”
“No one will come. I am dead. Go to shelter before you become dead, too.”
Her eye closed. She stopped breathing. I felt for a pulse in her throat, in her wrist. Nothing. She would have gleefully ripped me to ribbons a few days ago, yet I felt an enormous reluctance to leave her there, to admit that she was dead and there was nothing more that I could do.
Another blast and the twisted, crazily leaning side of the building next to us began to groan and shudder. I jumped to my feet and started running, glancing over my shoulder to see the whole building collapse in a thundering heap on top of the Skorpis’ dead body.
For a moment I was disoriented. I stopped, blinking in the swirling dust while explosions thudded around me and the energy screen crackled and hissed like a badly tuned video.
There! I recognized the scientists’ compound. Its buildings still stood, although the electrical fence around it seemed to be turned off. The Skorpis must be feeding all the base’s power into the energy shield, I thought. Once that shield is overloaded and shorts out, the attackers can blast the whole area with nukes.
But what good would that do? I asked myself as I dashed past the dead fence and into the largest building in the compound. The fleet’s been sent here to rescue me and my troop, not annihilate us.
Or so I thought.
I had no idea of how to find their shelter. Must be a doorway or a hatch somewhere, but I could see none in the dim twilight caused by the dust sifting through the air outside. Another explosion sh
ook the building so hard I nearly was knocked to my knees.
“Where’s the shelter?” I bellowed as loudly as I could. “It’s me, Orion!”
Almost immediately a section of the floor cracked open. “Down here,” a voice shouted back. “Quick!”
I dashed for the trapdoor and yanked it wide enough to squeeze through just as a greenish light filled the room and I felt a dizzying, nauseating sense of vertigo that made my head swim.
Then everything went utterly black.
Chapter 15
When I came to my senses once more I was hanging in midair almost three meters above the team of human scientists, who stood craning their necks upward toward me.
I landed in their midst with a painful thump, knocking several of them to the metal plates of the flooring. I rolled over and sat up. Looking around, I saw it was obvious that we were no longer in the Skorpis base.
“What happened?” asked one of the scientists.
“Where are we?”
“Transceiver beam,” answered Delos. He was sitting beside me, rubbing the small of his back with both hands. He was one of the men I had bowled over when I fell.
“We’re aboard one of the fleet vessels, then,” I said.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Indeed it did. We were in a metal chamber, bare except for a slit of an observation window set high in one wall and a tightly closed hatch opposite it. I could feel the humming vibration of a starship’s engines through the deck plates.
Transceiver beam, I thought. The attacking fleet must have saturated the Skorpis defensive shield at last and then squirted the beam down to snatch us. The beam scanned our molecular patterns, annihilated us, then reproduced us here on the ship exactly as we were on the planet. That was why I materialized nearly three meters above the others; they had been in the shelter and I was at the lip of their trapdoor when the beam found us.
The transceiver beam had killed us, all of us, then rebuilt us here aboard the starship. No one willingly allows himself to be transported by a matter transceiver.