by Ben Bova
Except that we never got there.
Chapter 22
Frede and the others were happy to be awake, alive, and running a starship rather than fighting as expendable infantry.
“This makes us more important to the Commonwealth,” Frede told me. “More valuable.”
“And it’s easier duty,” said weapons officer Emon. As a sergeant, he had been wounded twice during the assault on Bititu. Frede’s official title was now “first mate,” which set off a lot of jokes because she once again had jiggered the sleeping assignments so that she shared my bunk.
The bridge was compact, built more for efficiency than comfort, with only five duty stations jammed in cheek by jowl. Tactical command and all the ship’s information systems were tied together in the consoles and data screens that surrounded us. From my command chair I could see anything in the ship I needed to see, call up all of the computer files, activate any system aboard the vessel.
We made the transition to superlight velocity as smoothly as if the crew had spent years aboard the ship. As far as their memories and reflexes were concerned, they had. Neural training, whether awake or in cryosleep, leaves virtually the same imprint on the brain and nervous system as actual experience would.
“What if we could just fly this ship forever,” Frede whispered to me one night in our bunk. “Just forget the war and everything and go out among the stars for the rest of our lives.”
“Would you like that?” I asked.
“Yes!” She clutched at my bare shoulders. “Never to be frozen again. To be free. It’d be wonderful.”
“To be free,” I murmured, knowing that in all the eras of space-time in which I had existed, I had never been free.
“There are others,” she whispered. “You hear stories about them.”
“About who?” I asked.
“Renegades. Units that disappeared, just walked off into the jungle and never were heard from again. Ships that took off on their own, split from the fleet and ran away forever.”
I knew all about renegades. Lukka and his squad of mercenaries, fighting for their lives in the shambles of the Hittite empire’s collapse; Harkan and his band of thieves roaming the mountains of Anatolia, searching for his enslaved children; guerrillas from a thousand wars in a thousand different eras.
“And the war,” I asked her gently. “Our duty to the Commonwealth?”
She hesitated for a moment, realizing that she was speaking to her superior officer even though we happened to be lying nude in bed together.
“How long have you been serving the Commonwealth, Orion?”
I evaded a direct answer. “Time loses its meaning.”
“I’ve been serving all my life,” Frede said. “So have we all. It’s all we know, the army. It’s all we have to look forward to, until the day we’re killed.”
There was a trigger phrase, of course, that came with my orders. Whenever the crew began to show signs of humanity, indications that they were thinking of themselves instead of their duty to the Commonwealth, all I had to say was “Remember Yellowflower.”
The planet Yellowflower, according to the Commonwealth’s history of the war, had been suddenly and ruthlessly attacked, destroyed by Hegemony forces without a declaration of war, scoured down to bedrock. Four billion human beings had been killed, the planet’s entire biosphere totally obliterated. Yellowflower had been the start of the war, three generations earlier.
According to the Commonwealth’s history. I recalled the human scientists on Lunga telling me that it had been Tsihn attacks on Hegemony worlds that had started the war.
I stroked Frede’s short-cropped hair. “It’s not so bad now. We’ve got this fine ship. As long as we stay in superlight no one can touch us.”
“But sooner or later we’ll drop back to relativistic speed and reenter the war.”
“Maybe,” I murmured, not yet ready to tell her what I was hoping to do.
She fell asleep and I lay on the bunk beside her. As captain of this vessel, my quarters were small but comfortable. Frede was right: the galaxy is huge; one ship could lose itself among the stars. But what of all the other ships, all the other assault teams and regiments and armies and battle fleets? What right did we have to run away and hide while others were fighting to their deaths, humans and aliens, Commonwealth and Hegemony?
There has to be a way to stop this killing, I told myself. There has to be.
A warning, Orion.
It was a voice from the Old Ones, in my mind. I recognized it instantly. Closing my eyes, I felt a moment of utter cold, the wild plunging sensation of nothingness, and then I was swimming in the warm sea of their ocean once again. A dozen or more of the Old Ones glided through the deep, dark water with me, pulsating colors, tentacles waving as if in greeting.
“Is this the planet in the Jilbert system or am I back on Lunga?” I asked.
“What difference?” came their reply. “In a sense, we are on both worlds—and many others, as well.”
I thought I understood. Each of the Old Ones swimming around me came from a different planet. They had all come together to meet with me; each of us was light-years from all the others, yet we swam together in this fathomless ocean.
“You said you wanted to warn me of something?”
Their response seemed to come from all of them, even though I heard it as only one voice.
“Orion, your war grows deeper and more violent. It troubles us.”
“I have been asked by one of my Creators to encourage you to join the Commonwealth,” I said. “Their reasoning is that, with you on their side, they will quickly end the war.”
“In victory for the Commonwealth, at the expense of the Hegemony.”
“Yes.”
“Since this slaughter began,” they said, “we and others of our maturity have remained totally neutral.”
“Others?” I asked.
“There are many, many races among the galaxies, Orion. And even between them. You humans have met and interacted with species of your own youthful stage of development. You interact with your own intellectual peers. You trade with them. You fight with them.”
“While you older species remain aloof from us.”
“From you, and from the Skorpis, the Tsihn, the race you call the Arachnoids, and all the others who have not yet achieved the wisdom to avoid slaughtering one another.”
I got the impression of a group of gray-haired elders watching a gaggle of noisy brats fighting in a sandbox.
“But your war grows more violent,” they repeated.
I agreed. “There seems to be no end to it.”
“From the outset you slaughtered billions of your own kind, eradicated all life-forms from entire planets, blasting them down to their rocky mantles.
“Then you escalated the violence. Whole planets were blown up, as were the two outer worlds in the Jilbert system, blasted into fragments.”
“I know,” I said.
The voice became grave. “Now the violence is about to escalate again. The Commonwealth has perfected a weapon that can destroy a star. The weapon creates a core collapse of the star; a supernova explosion is the result.”
I felt a hollow sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach.
“This must not be allowed.”
“If the Commonwealth unleashes this weapon,” I told them, “then the Hegemony won’t rest until it develops something similar.”
“We will not permit stars to be destroyed.”
“Not permit…?”
“Give this message to your Creators, to the leaders of both warring factions: Tell them that if they attempt to destroy a star they themselves will be eliminated from the continuum.”
“Eliminated?”
“The human race, the Skorpis, the Tsihn, all the warring species will be extinguished.”
“How? What do you intend to do?”
“The older species have maintained neutrality throughout your squabbles. But we cannot allow you to destroy t
he very stars on which the continuum hinges. Attempt to attack a single star, and we will eliminate you—all of you—completely.”
They spoke with one voice, an implacable finality in their tone.
“Go back to your Creators and tell them what we have said, Orion. The fate of many species depends on their reaction to our warning.”
I sat bolt upright on my bunk. Frede lay sleeping peacefully beside me, a little girl’s smile on her relaxed face.
The Old Ones were using me as a messenger again. It’s not enough that Aten manipulates me, the Old Ones use me to manipulate him and the other Creators.
But then I smiled. Did the Old Ones know my inner thoughts, my plans? I had hoped to use this scout ship to find Anya, somewhere deep in Hegemony territory. Now the Old Ones had given me a reason for seeking her. I had to warn her about the Commonwealth’s star-wrecker.
The third watch still had an hour to go when I came onto the bridge and relieved Dyer, my logistics/damage-control officer, who had the command. The watch was almost entirely perfunctory; as long as we were in superlight velocity there was nothing to worry about except a possible internal malfunction.
Taking the command chair, I ransacked the ship’s computer records for information about the Hegemony. Where was their capital planet? What kind of defenses guarded it? Would they honor a flag of truce on a Commonwealth ship?
The computer could not tell me, of course, if Anya was in the Hegemony’s capital. The data screens showed their capital planet, Prime, in the Zeta system. I viewed their cities and learned their population, history, economy, social customs, politics, military capabilities—much data, little understanding.
The screens showed Prime itself to be a gray, forbidding city of massive stone buildings rising out of dark cliffs into a heavy cloudy sky. Its streets were almost empty, swept by gusts of rain and sleet. Giant Skorpis warriors seemed to be at every intersection, serving as police or militia guards. The people of Prime looked grim, dour, humorless.
“Why the interest in Prime?”
I looked up from the screens surrounding my chair and saw Frede standing beside me, looking curious. At the touch of a keypad I blanked the screens.
“That’s where we’re going,” I said.
“Prime?” she squeaked. “But that’s the Hegemony’s capital!”
The four others on duty in the bridge turned and stared at us.
“I have secret orders,” I told her. But I didn’t say who the orders had come from. “We’re on a mission of diplomacy to Prime.”
“They’ll blow us out of the galaxy the instant we drop out of superlight,” Frede said.
“Let’s hope not.”
Reluctantly she followed my command to set course for the Hegemony capital. I planned to send out message capsules ahead of us once we neared the Zeta system, so the Hegemony defenders would be warned that we were coming and that our mission was a peaceful one. Frede and the rest of the crew thought the Hegemony ships would shoot first and check on our story after we were safely dead. The almost happy air about the ship dissolved into soldierly griping and dread.
There was something more that I could do, of course. That night, while Frede slept, I tried with all my energies to reach across the span of space-time and contact Anya. Nothing. It was like facing a blank wall too high to climb, too wide to go around.
So I reached out to Aten, instead. Concentrating on my memory of the Creators’ city, I translated myself to its timeless stasis in the continuum. I found myself standing atop a Mayan pyramid in the heart of the city, high enough to look out across its broad empty avenues toward the eternal sea. The sun’s warmth Was tempered slightly by the shimmering golden dome of energy that encased the city.
Aten looked surprised when I appeared. He and several other of the Creators were apparently locked deep in conference, there at the top of the steep stone pyramid. They were all standing together before the sacrificial altar: Aten in a white and gold military uniform; the dark-bearded one I thought of as Zeus in a comfortable tunic and slacks; rust-haired Ares; slim, sharp-eyed Hermes; and the beautiful redheaded woman who had styled herself Hera in an earlier age.
It was Hermes who spied me first; the others had their backs to me as they talked earnestly among themselves.
“Look who’s here,” Hermes said, touching Aten on the shoulder.
They all turned toward me, wide-eyed with surprise.
Hera smiled maliciously at me. “Who invited you, Orion?”
“The Old Ones,” I answered.
That stifled any complaints or gibes they intended to make. “What do you mean?” Aten snapped.
“They have given me a message for you. A warning,” I said. “If you try to use the star-destroying weapon the Commonwealth has developed, the Old Ones will destroy you.”
Ares glared at me. “How could they know about the star-wrecker? You told them, Orion! You’re a traitor!”
“I didn’t know about the weapon until they told me of it,” I retorted.
“That’s true,” Aten said. “Orion knew nothing of the weapon.”
“Then how could the Old Ones know?”
“They know,” I said. “And they will eliminate all of us if you try to use it.”
“How credible is this threat by the Old Ones?” Zeus asked.
“What threat?” Aten sneered. “How could they destroy us? We can avoid them by traveling through time whenever we wish. If necessary I can go back to their time of origins and eliminate them.”
“I wonder,” Zeus muttered.
“Your meddling with space-time has caused us enough trouble,” Hera complained.
“My meddling,” Aten retorted, “is what created us. Without me, we would never have come into existence.”
Zeus said to me, “Orion, you must give this warning to Anya and her cohorts, too.”
“The Hegemony—”
“Is developing a similar weapon,” Hera told me. “What did you expect?”
“I am trying to reach Anya now,” I said to them.
Aten fixed me with an angry look. “I never told you to do so.”
“But I told you that I would find her,” I said. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“In the era of the war?” Zeus asked.
“Yes. I am flying my ship to the Hegemony capital to tell her that you have the star-weapon.”
“I told you he was a traitor,” Ares snapped hotly.
I ignored him. “Now I must carry the Old Ones’ warning to her.”
“No,” Aten snapped. “You mustn’t do that.”
“I am already doing it.”
“I’ll put a stop to that! And to you, too, Orion.”
“Wait,” said Zeus. “Perhaps your creature can accomplish what we cannot.”
“Nonsense!”
“Anya has been close to this one in the past,” Hera said, sneering. “Maybe she will listen to him where she refuses to speak with us.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Hermes.
Ares glowered at me and rubbed his chin. “Aten, if this creature is yours, you ought to control him better than this.”
“I can control him!”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “Not entirely. I came here on my own power, not because you summoned me. I decided to find Anya even when you told me it was impossible.”
He smirked at me. “So you think you have free will? That you are not under my command every instant of your existence?”
“I’ve gone against your commands in the past,” I countered.
“Pah!” spat Zeus. “Stop this posturing, both of you. Aten, I suggest you use your creature to make contact with Anya. This threat from the Old Ones must be taken seriously.”
His eyes never leaving mine, Aten replied, “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps this pitifully flawed wretch can be useful to us in spite of himself.”
I seemed to fall asleep then, as deep and restful a sleep as I have ever known. When I awoke, I was back in my bunk aboard th
e Apollo, with Frede drowsing peacefully beside me. A wonderful warm feeling of joy filled me. I was going to find Anya, I was going to see her again! And I knew that she loved me as much as I loved her. Nothing else mattered.
Chapter 23
Frede computed our course to the Zeta system with conspicuous reluctance. When on duty in the bridge she was crisp, efficient, and knowledgeable. She checked her navigation constantly by having us drop out of superlight velocity at random times so that she could take an observation of the stars. It took only a few seconds; then we accelerated back into superlight again.
At night, in bed, she tried to talk me out of entering the Zeta system.
“It’s suicide, Orion! They’ll blast us before we have a chance to blink our eyes. The system must have automated defense bases all around it, belts of them orbiting the star. They’ll be programmed to shoot the instant any unauthorized vessel pops out of superlight within range of their weapons.”
“We’ll send message capsules ahead,” I repeated each time she brought up the argument. “We’ll tell them exactly when and where we’ll appear.”
“Great! Then they’ll know exactly where and when to shoot!”
“Our mission is a peaceful one,” I said. “Surely the Hegemony can understand that one scout won’t be a threat to their capital.”
Frede huffed at me. “No, they’ll see it as an opportunity for target practice.”
Every night we came to the same deadlock. And every night I would end the matter by saying, “Lieutenant, the time for argument is finished. As your commanding officer, I order this discussion closed.”
Frede would grumble and give it up. Until the next night. We made love infrequently during that flight to Prime; it was difficult to work up any ardor when each of us was convinced that the other was being pigheaded.
And then, the night before we were scheduled to start sending out the message capsules, Frede told me what was really bothering her.
“You call out to Anya in your sleep, you know.”
She was undressing. I did not feel at all sleepy. I did not answer her.
“That’s the reason you want to go to Prime, isn’t it?” Frede asked me. “She’s there.”