by Ben Bova
“We’ve got to get out of here!” I shouted into Frede’s ear.
“Good thinking,” she snapped. “How?”
“Transceiver.”
“Not me!” She shook her head as she sprayed a quartet of Skorpis warriors with burning laser fire.
“We’re dead if we don’t.”
“We’re dead if we do. I don’t care if a copy of me lands on Loris.”
But I was thinking of Anya. She knew that coming to Loris would mean throwing herself on Aten’s mercy. She knew that surrendering to the Commonwealth could mean final, utter, irretrievable death for her. Yet she had come, she had insisted on this desperate gamble for peace, because she wanted to stop the war. I had thought that she—like the other Creators—cared only for their own safety. But now I realized that she also cared about the billions of humans who were enmeshed in this endless killing. She wanted to face Aten and stop the war, no matter what the cost to herself.
And I would do everything I could, anything I could, to help her.
I glanced at the control console. Magro lay at its foot in a pool of blood.
“You don’t even know where the planet is anymore,” Frede insisted. “You can’t jump blind!”
“It’s our only chance.”
“Orion, don’t!” Frede warned.
“We’re already dead,” I shouted into her ear, over the blasts of the guns and the screams of the fighting, half-crazed humans and Skorpis. “What difference does it make?”
“I’ll take down as many of these damned cats as I can,” Frede shouted back. “I won’t take the coward’s way out.”
That was her training, I knew. The programming the army pumped into her brain while she was in cryosleep. Fight as long as you can. Take as many of the enemy as possible. Never surrender.
“I’ve got to try,” I said.
She put the muzzle of her rifle under my chin. It was burning hot. “Stay and fight, Orion.”
“You’d shoot me?”
“I’d shoot any coward who tried to run away.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw that three Skorpis warriors were trying to edge across the bay and flank us again. They were dragging the bodies of fallen warriors to shield them.
“There!” I yelled, and fired at them. Frede’s heavier rifle beam burned through one of the corpses and hit the warrior behind it. I hit another on the top of his helmet. The third scampered backward, back toward the protection of his mates.
And I jumped out from behind the cryo capsule, crabbing sideways to Magro’s body and the slim protection of the console stand. As I raised my head high enough to look at the console instruments, I saw Frede aim her rifle at me.
Time froze. I did not blame her for wanting to kill me. As far as she was concerned, I was killing her. Matter transmission destroyed the thing being sent and assembled a copy of it elsewhere. Did it matter if the Skorpis killed us or the transceiver did? I punched the key that activated the transceiver as I stared at Frede, who locked her finger on the rifle’s trigger.
But did not fire.
Everything went black. I recognized the blast of deathly cold that enveloped me. And I realized for the first time that the translations through the continuum that I had undergone were forms of matter transmission; the transceivers being used in this era were actually primitive forerunners of the capabilities that Aten and the other Creators used at their whim.
I had used them, too. Without knowing how it was done, knowing only how to direct such energies, I had translated myself across the continuum more than once.
Now, in this moment of absolute nothingness, I realized that I had to control not only my own translation through space-time, but those of all the others, as well. And I realized something more: Every time I had died and been revived by the Golden One—it was no revival at all. He merely built new copies of me. When I died, that person died forever, as completely and finally as the lowliest earthworm dies. A new Orion was created by the Golden One to do his bidding, and given the memories that Aten thought he should have. I laughed in the soundless infinity of the void. I was not immortal at all; merely copied.
But that meant that Aten and the other Creators were no more immortal than I. They could die. They could be killed. Anya would die, unless I found a way to save her.
That way lay on the planet Loris, capital of the Commonwealth, where Aten directed the war.
I saw Loris in my mind, an Earthlike planet of blue oceans and white clouds. I reached out mentally and sensed Frede and the others of my crew. And Anya, frozen in sleep inside the cryonic capsule.
Distantly, I sensed others observing me. The Creators? Aten? No, I did not feel the snide derision of the Golden One or the haughty disdain of his fellow Creators. It was the Old Ones reaching to me. I felt the warmth of their approval, the strength of their help. This one time they were actually unbending from their aloofness to help me.
“Loris,” I said without words, without sound or the body to speak with. Into the blank emptiness of the void between space-times, I gathered Anya and my crew and willed us to the planet Loris.
Chapter 30
Voices struck at me.
“What is it?”
“How can it be?”
“They just—appeared! Pop! Just like that.”
I opened my eyes, glad that I had eyes and ears and an existence in the world again.
We were in a wide, sunny city plaza, what was left of us. Frede still leaned against the cryo capsule, pointing her rifle at me. The others of my crew were slumped against the capsule’s curved flank. The side that had faced the Skorpis’s guns was so hot that it steamed in the afternoon air.
The plaza was filled with people. Well-dressed men and women. The buildings that lined the spacious open square were all graceful towers of glass and gleaming metal. The square was paved with colorful tiles. A fountain sprayed water barely a dozen meters from where we had landed. The people gaped at us as if we were ghosts or some strange alien apparition. More people were gathering around us, talking, pointing, staring.
We were a grimy crew. Bloody, sweaty, aching and parched from our deadly battle. Eighteen of us still alive. Our uniforms were torn, our faces streaked with dirt.
“Who are they?” an elderly woman asked.
“How dare they show themselves here?”
“I think they’re soldiers! ”
“Soldiers? You mean, from the army?”
“What are they doing here?”
“They must be soldiers of some sort. Look at the guns they’re carrying.”
“You’re not permitted to carry weapons in the capital,” a cross-faced man shouted at us. “I’ve summoned the police.”
“They smell terrible!”
“Yes, we smell terrible and we look terrible,” I shouted at them. “We’ve been fighting and dying to save you from being invaded.”
They gasped.
“He’s insane!”
“The whole group—look at them! Obvious lunatics.”
“Where are the police? I called for them more than a minute ago.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. “Don’t you realize there’s a battle going on in orbit above you? Don’t you know you’re at war?”
“It’s some sort of trick.”
“New theater. The younger generation always tries to shock their elders.”
One of the gray-haired women stepped up to me, barely as tall as my collarbone. “See here, young man, there’s no use trying to frighten us. The war is being fought a thousand light-years away from here.”
I shook my head in a combination of disbelief and disgust, then turned away from her and went over to what was left of my crew.
Frede and the rest of my crew were just as stunned as the civilians. She lowered her rifle, slumped against the sleep capsule and let herself slide down to a sitting position. The others sprawled, exhausted, on the brightly colored tile pavement.
“This is Loris?” Frede asked.
I nodded. “The capital of the Commonwealth.”
One of the men came over and glared at me. “You can’t stay here,” he told me sternly. “This is a public plaza, not an army barracks.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” I asked, controlling my temper.
“That’s not for me to decide. But—Ah! Here come the police, at last.”
The crowd made a path for a pair of gleaming robots that glided on flight packs a few centimeters above the pavement. Legless, they had six arms, cylindrical torsos, and domed heads that bore sensors and speaker grilles.
“Please identify yourselves,” said the one on my left.
“We are the survivors of the crew of the scout ship Apollo,” I said. “We escaped the battle—”
“One moment, please.” The robot put out one clawed hand in a very human gesture. Then it said, “Records indicate that the Apollo is on a mission to the Jilbert system. Please identify yourselves.”
“We never got to the Jilbert system,” I said, starting to feel odd arguing with a machine. “We got involved in the battle now going on here.”
“There is no battle under way here.”
“In orbit.” I pointed overhead.
The crowd murmured at that. I wondered if any of them would take the trouble to look at the sky after dark, when the exploding spacecraft could be seen as flashes of light among the stars.
If a robot could glare, this one did. “Please come with me.”
“Where?”
“To higher authority.”
Of course, I thought. Where else? Then I pointed to the cryo unit. “This capsule can’t be left here. It should be brought to a hospital or—”
“The object will be taken into custody and brought to a proper facility.”
“We go with it,” I said.
“You will come with us,” the robot replied. “The object will be taken by others to a proper facility.”
I rested my hand on the butt of my pistol. Frede and my crew got slowly to their feet, unlimbering their weapons. The crowd faded back from us.
“We were assigned to guard this capsule,” I lied. “We have carried it across many light-years and fought overwhelming odds to bring it here safely. We will not leave it in a public square for some garbage truck to pick up.”
The robot buzzed to itself for several moments. I noticed that its partner edged off to my right slightly, as if to catch me in a crossfire if any shooting started. Little Jerron, half his tunic torn away and his skin blackened with laser burns, stepped up to it and nudged it with the muzzle of his rifle. It stopped and hovered, buzzing loudly.
“A trained and experienced medical team is on its way to handle the capsule,” the first robot said. “It will be dealt with properly.”
“Good,” I replied. “We’ll wait for them to arrive; then we will go with you.”
Within minutes three aircars glided across the square and landed gently about fifty meters from us. The crowd muttered and chattered as a team of humans climbed out of the cars. One group wore medical whites. The others were in blue, and armed with pistols and stubby rifles.
“I am Captain Perry of the capital police,” said one of the blue uniforms. He was almost my height, stocky, muscular. His curly dark hair flowed to his collar; his face was square, with a pugnacious button of a nose in its middle.
“I am Orion, captain of the Apollo. We’ve brought this cryo capsule from Prime, the Hegemony capital. It bears one of the Hegemony’s top leaders, who has come here to discuss peace terms.”
“While the whole Skorpis fleet is trying to obliterate our defenses?” Perry almost snarled the words.
I fell back on the time-honored refuge of the soldier. “I’m just following my orders, Captain.” It was a lie, but it would work—for the time being.
He tried to stare me down, and when that didn’t work he said, “All right, we’ll take the capsule to our medical facility. But first you’ll have to give up your weapons.”
I shook my head. “We’re soldiers, Captain. We will surrender our weapons to the proper army authorities, no one else.”
“On this planet, the police have the authority to disarm anyone carrying a weapon.”
“Find an army officer to order us, and we’ll disarm,” I said.
Clearly unhappy with us, Perry ordered the medics to attach flight packs to Anya’s capsule and slide it into their car. Then he bundled my crew into the two police cars. Eight of them went with Frede; I led the remaining nine into the car with Perry. It was a tight squeeze for us all, especially with the rifles poking ribs.
As I strapped myself in beside Captain Perry I heard the robot police officers telling the crowd, “Please disperse. You are impeding traffic flow.”
Like good little citizens, they broke up and went their separate ways, buzzing among themselves about this strange event.
All three aircars lifted off the pavement and started down one of the narrow canyons between the glass and metal towers. We climbed above the towers and I could see the city spread out beneath me, a neat geometrical gridwork of straight streets dotted with plazas and green parks.
The white medical car peeled off and headed in a different direction.
“Wait!” I said to Captain Perry. “We’re going with the capsule.”
“No, you’re not,” he said tightly. “The capsule’s going to the med labs, where it will be examined and tested.”
“But—”
“You and your crew are going to an interrogation center. We checked your story. The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system, more than seven hundred light-years from here. Either you’re lying or you’re a band of traitors. Either way, we’ll get the truth out of you.”
I slid the pistol from my holster and nudged it under his chin.
Perry’s eyes went wide. “Are you crazy?”
“Call it battle fatigue,” I said. “Either we go with the capsule or your brains get splattered on the overhead.”
The other police officers in the car gripped their weapons. So did my crew. The driver was the only one without a gun in his hands; he clung to the control wheel, gulped and stared straight ahead.
“You’ll kill all of us!” Perry snapped.
“That includes you.”
He huffed, then said to the driver, “Follow the medic van.”
We turned and went after the white aircar.
“They’ll hang you by the balls for this, Orion,” Perry said. “And I’ll be there to cheer them on.”
“After the capsule’s properly taken care of,” I told him, “then we can see whose balls get stretched.”
The medical center was a trap.
We landed in the marked pad in the middle of four towering buildings, all three aircars touching down virtually at the same instant. As we climbed out of the cars, four full squads of Tsihn soldiery stepped out of the doors on all four sides of us, guns leveled.
“Lizards!” I heard Frede growl.
“You will drop your weapons, humans,” said the Tsihn leader, a huge ocher-colored reptilian whose chest and arms were covered with insignia and decorations.
For a long silent moment we stood there confronting each other.
“I am Colonel Hrass-shleessa,” the big reptilian said. “I am duly authorized to command you. Put your weapons on the ground or we will fire.”
I glanced sideways at Captain Perry. He did not relish the idea of being caught in a firefight between us and the Tsihn.
We were hopelessly outnumbered. “They’ll kill us all,” Jerron grumbled. “Damned lizards.”
“Put your guns down,” I commanded my crew. “We will obey the colonel’s order.” I had no choice but to be an obedient soldier.
They marched us into another aircar while a medical team guided Anya’s capsule, floating on its flight packs, into one of the buildings. This aircar was army brown, and built more like a truck. We were bundled into the back, seated on the two benches running along its sides. I caught a gli
mpse of Captain Perry standing next to his own aircar as they slammed the hatch shut in my face. He was grinning at me, a malicious grin of triumph.
We flew out of the city, into the mountains to its west, for more than an hour. With nothing else to do, most of my crew flaked out and drowsed. I sat on the hard bucket seat and thought of the crew members who weren’t with us anymore: bloodied Emon, Dyer with her legs blown away, so many others. Don’t make friends, I told myself. A combat soldier shouldn’t make any personal attachments.
We were flown to an army detention center out in the cold, gray mountains. Human prisoners and Tsihn guards. I bristled at the reptilians; every instinct in me told me they were the enemies of humankind. And here in this detention center that certainly seemed so.
They separated me from Frede and the rest of the crew, showed me to a bare little windowless cell. Nothing but a cot, sink and toilet. And a lightbulb set into the concrete ceiling, too high for me to reach.
I was not in the cell for long, however. A pair of Tsihn guards unlocked my door and escorted me to a room where a junior Tsihn officer—its scales were pale lemon and bore hardly any decorations at all—sat on a high stool that was the only piece of furniture visible.
“You will sit,” it said to me.
I lowered myself to the concrete floor. It felt cold, clammy. My two guards remained standing by the door.
Satisfied that he could loom over me, the Tsihn officer leaned toward me and asked, “Who are you and where are you from?”
“My name is Orion. I was captain of the Apollo.”
It bared its teeth. “The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system.”
“We never got there. We went to Prime, instead, and brought one of the Hegemony’s topmost leaders here to discuss peace terms with the Commonwealth’s leadership.”
It snorted. I could see the humid air huffing from its nostrils. “Orion, you say your name is?”
“Yes.”
“There is no record of you in the Commonwealth military files.”
That surprised me only slightly. “Check with Brigadier Uxley at sector station six,” I said. “He knows me. Check with my crew; we’ve done a lot of fighting together. Lunga, Bititu, the battle going on now in orbit.”