Orion Among the Stars

I made myself smile back at her. “The Skorpis commander made an honorable agreement with me. She’s a warrior. She’d kill me if she could but she wouldn’t deliberately lie to me.”

“You think not?”

“She doesn’t have the same set of values that you do,” I said.

Randa’s eyes shifted from me to her husband. “Let’s go,” she said to Delos, “and leave this madman to his frozen soldiers.” With that she ducked through the hatch.

Delos looked up at me with eyes that were almost sad. “Somehow I get the feeling, Orion, that I would learn a lot more about the universe by going with you.”

“Be my guest,” I said.

But he shook his head. “I wish I could. I’m not a soldier, but I have a duty to perform. And I know my place.”

“Maybe you can help to end this war.”

“How?”

“I wish I knew.”

He put out his hand to me. “We’re on opposite sides, I know. But—good luck, Orion. I wish there really was a way to end this war.”

“Search for it,” I said, taking his hand.

Chapter 18

Part of my agreement with the Skorpis commander was that she allow me to leave the Lunga system. Alone now in the survey vessel, I broke orbit and headed in the direction that the Tsihn fleet had taken. The Skorpis battle cruisers remained in orbit, but I knew that as soon as their commander decided to, they could overtake me and blast me into vapor.

The survey vessel was not capable of lightspeed. The only safety I could hope for was to find another Commonwealth ship in normal space. A forlorn hope, I realized. Space is vast, and most of the ships traveling through it go to superlight velocity as soon as they can, which puts them completely out of touch with turtle-boats such as mine.

But I had another means of communicating.

I put the ship on autopilot, with instructions to warn me if any Skorpis or Hegemony vessels appeared nearby. Then I leaned back in the pilot’s chair, closed my eyes, and reached for contact with the Creators.

This time it was easy. The Golden One appeared immediately, decked in a magnificent glowing robe. He seemed to be hovering in the emptiness of interstellar space, a splendid god radiating power and glory.

“What a strange ape you are, Orion,” he said. “Threatening to kill yourself if the enemy refused to return your troopers to you.”

“I’ve died before,” I said. “There’s no great trick to it.”

“But you expect me to revive you each time.”

Vaguely I recalled a slight, soft-spoken Hindu with dark skin and large liquid eyes. “It would be a relief to be taken off the wheel of life,” I said.

“You seek nothingness? Oblivion?”

“It would be an end to pain.”

Aten smirked at me. “Your nirvana is not to be, Orion. Not yet. I have further chores for you.”

“First revive my troopers,” I said. “Awaken them and allow them to live normal human lives. They deserve that much, at least.”

“They will be revived, I promise you. I haven’t given up hope of enlisting the aid of the Old Ones and similar ancient races. Your troopers will help you to establish the next point of contact with them.”

“End this war,” I urged him. “Stop the killing. What’s so important that it makes you send billions to their deaths?”

“What’s so important about those billions that it matters when and how they die? They’re creatures, Orion. Creatures. My creations. I can use them as I choose. I use them as I must.”

“Why should we help you to carry on this war? What’s the point of it? Why can’t you stop it?”

Aten shook his head as if disappointed in me. “How little you understand, my creature. Don’t you think I would end the war if I could? It isn’t that easy, Orion.”

“Why not?”

“If it takes two to make a fight, it also takes two to make peace. Anya and her ilk won’t stop fighting. They want their way, and that way will lead us all to utter disaster.”

“She must think differently.”

“She is wrong!”

I thought, If only I could find Anya, speak with her, learn why she is fighting, what her goals are.

But the Golden One read my thoughts as easily as if I had spoken them aloud. “She would kill you out of hand, Orion. The goddess you love now seeks only blood and vengeance. Anyone serving me is her enemy and she will destroy them. She is my enemy, Orion. And therefore she is your enemy.”

No, I thought. She could never be my enemy.

“Fool,” spat Aten. And he disappeared from my awareness.

I was back in the cockpit of the survey vessel. Warning lights on the control board were blinking red, the contact alarm beeping annoyingly.

The screen showed a lone vessel, a sleek scout ship moving at nearly lightspeed toward me. Cranking up the sensors to maximum magnification, I saw that it bore the hexagonal symbol of the Commonwealth.

It was a Tsihn ship. Its captain appeared on my display screen, small and slight, scales rippling pink and pale yellow.

“You are the survey vessel from the Blood Hunter,” it told me, rather than asking me. “The humanoid known as Orion.”

“That is correct.”

“Good. You will be attached to my ship and then we can haul our eggs out of this region before a Hegemony cruiser spots us.”

I stayed aboard the survey ship while the Tsihn scout sent out an EVA team to grapple my vessel and attach it to theirs. Once we were safely linked to them, the scout ship accelerated to lightspeed and made the jump to superlight velocity.

The Tsihn captain did not invite me aboard its ship. It seemed to want to have as little to do with me as possible. Its orders had been to penetrate the area where I had jumped away from the Blood Hunter, find me and bring me back to the nearest Tsihn base. Its orders did not include hospitality or even civility.

The Tsihn base was not a planet, but a massive motile station nearly a hundred light-years from the Lunga region. It hung in the emptiness of interstellar space, outlined against a distant bright swirl of gas and dust glowing red and blue in fluorescence stimulated by a cluster of newborn hot, blue stars a few light-years away.

There was a human section to the station, and I was brought there by a Tsihn escort, not knowing whether I was going to receive a medal or a court-martial.

I got neither. The human chief of the section was a grizzled old brigadier named Uxley with prosthetic legs and a permanently bleary expression on his baggy, sagging face. I was brought to his office by my Tsihn guards, who wheeled about and left without a word or a salute. I stood before his desk at attention.

“You’re being put in charge of a battalion, Orion,” Brigadier Uxley told me, with no preliminaries. “Don’t ask me why. Somebody higher up in the chain of command must either have enormous faith in you or wants to see you dead. Maybe both.”

He was clearly unhappy over me. I had no rank, not even a record in his personnel files. As far as he was concerned I was the protege of some high-ranking officer or politician, with no real military experience. He was, of course, more right than he could know.

“There’s a little piece of rock called Bititu,” he said, flashing an image of a black, pitted asteroid on his wall