Orion Among the Stars

“I will go to him,” Anya was telling the others. “Orion will convey me in his ship. You can return to your hibernation fields until I return.”

They nodded among themselves, then one by one became encased in those glowing spheres of energy that they used to move through space-time. The spheres shone weakly, though, as if they barely had enough power to cover the individual Creators. I knew that each of them had once been able to live in the emptiness of deep space in those spheres, drawing energy directly from the stars themselves. Now they looked as if they could barely make it to their separate chambers, deep beneath the Hegemony’s capitol, buried alive in hibernation crypts where they hoped they would be safe from the Commonwealth’s weaponry. They slept while their creatures fought and died for them.

“Come, Orion,” said Anya, “it’s time to put an end to this fighting. Take me to your ship.”

So all the fighting, all the strategy and battles came down simply to this: Threaten the Creators who had caused this war, and they were willing to surrender. Or at least ask for a truce. They thought nothing of sending millions of cloned warriors into battle, causing billions of deaths among the humans and other species. But threaten them, themselves, and they were ready to give up.

I could barely conceal my contempt for them all, even Anya.

And she knew it. She made a wan smile for me and said softly, “For what it’s worth, I never wanted this war.”

I had no intention of surrendering to Aten, but I had to obey Anya’s wishes. Or at least, appear to obey.

So I watched as Hegemony technicians slipped her inert form into a cryosleep capsule, an elaborately engraved metal sarcophagus, which we loaded aboard the Apollo. The technicians and other humans in the spaceport seemed to understand that their leaders had decided to surrender to the Commonwealth. Rumors of defeat hung heavy in the air. They were sullen, fearful, angry. But they did as they were told.

Anya’s last waking thoughts warned me, Don’t let the Skorpis know that we are going to surrender. They would blow your ship out of the galaxy if they knew.

I wondered if the humans of Prime would try to stop us, but they were obedient and allowed us to break orbit and head out of the Zeta system.

But not for long.

We were accelerating as fast as we could, trying to achieve the safety of superlight velocity before anyone could deter us. We passed the rings of defenses that orbited Prime, then flew through the belt of battle stations that surrounded the Zeta system like a globe of bristling hedgehog spines.

Someone back on the capital planet must have passed on the rumors of our intention to surrender to the Skorpis, for as we were clearing the outermost battle stations in the belt, we were hailed by a dour-faced Skorpis admiral.

I took her message in my command chair on the bridge, wearing my best ship’s uniform.

“There is ugly talk,” said the admiral, her teeth showing in a barely suppressed snarl, “that you return to the Commonwealth to discuss surrender of the Hegemony.”

“This ship carries one of your leaders in cryosleep,” I answered. “We are transporting her to Loris, the capital of the Commonwealth, at her command.”

“To surrender?”

A diplomat would have found evasive words. A politician would have lied. I was simply a warrior. “To discuss an armistice, a truce, an end to the war,” I said.

“On Commonwealth terms,” the Skorpis admiral rumbled, like a lioness growling.

“On the best terms that can be obtained.”

“Surrender.”

“Not surrender,” I insisted. “An armistice. Peace.”

“Surrender,” she repeated. And I realized that she meant I should surrender my ship to her.

“This vessel is on a diplomatic mission. We are carrying one of the Hegemony’s highest leaders. You cannot order us—”

“Stop accelerating and prepare to be boarded by my warriors,” the Skorpis admiral insisted. “Otherwise we will destroy you, your ship, and the traitoress who wants to surrender.”

I knew that every moment I could keep her talking was a moment closer to the relative safety of superlight.

“On what authority do you make such an unreasonable demand?” I asked, as indignantly as I could.

Her image in my display screen disappeared, instantly replaced by a view of a dozen Skorpis battle cruisers powering toward us.

The Apollo rocked wildly.

“They’ve opened fire on us!” Emon yelled. He was practically at my elbow; his shout was more from sudden excitement than fear. At least, I hoped so.

“Evasive maneuvers,” I said.

You can’t evade laser beams, even at relativistic speed. With a dozen battle cruisers within range of us, they blazed away, catching us in a cone of fire that sizzled our defensive screen and sent all the meters on the bridge deep into the red.

It was a race to see whether they could overload our screen and penetrate it before we achieved superlight and winked out of their sector of space-time.

“Cancel the evasive maneuvers,” I said. “All available power to the main engines.”

We were still shaking and rattling from the blasts of laser bolts drenching our screen. And in the static- streaked displays I could see that squadron of battle cruisers coming up on us, far faster than we were. I turned to Frede, strapped into the seat beside me.

She knew what I was going to ask before I asked it. “Computer projects complete screen collapse fourteen seconds before we achieve superlight.”

“That’s enough time—”

“For them to vaporize us, yes,” Frede finished for me.

There had to be something we could do.

“Transfer power from the forward section of the screen to the rear. That’s where we’re being hit.”

“But if those battle cruisers maneuver to come in on our forward section…” She did not have to complete the sentence. One shot on an unscreened section of the ship would cut us in two like a hot knife going through butter.

“Do it!” I snapped.

Frede’s fingers flicked across her keyboard. “Computer projects we’ll be in superlight twenty seconds before the screen overloads,” she said. Then added, “If nobody hits us forward.”

We all held our breaths. The ship rocked and shivered under the pounding of the orbital stations’ guns. The battle cruisers were gaining on us steadily. Two of them spurted ahead, trying to get in front of us and attack us from that quarter.

And then we flashed into superlight. All the display screens went blank and our shaking, shuddering ordeal was over.

“We made it!” whooped Jerron, from his engineer’s console.

“So far,” I said.

Frede turned to me. “They know we’re heading for Loris. They can plant squadrons in all the likely places where we’d come out of superlight for navigational fixes. They’ll be waiting for us.”

“Only if we follow the geodesic to Loris,” I said. ” Nowis the time for evasive maneuvers.”

It was a gamble. We had to reach Loris before the Commonwealth started using the star-killers, but we could not approach Loris on the shortest route because Skorpis battle squadrons would be lying in wait along that way. So we had to take a more roundabout route, yet not such a distorted one that our arrival at Loris would be delayed too long.

How long was too long? I had no way of knowing.