“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? 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
“One moment, please.” The robot put out one clawed hand in a very human gesture. Then it said, “Records indicate that the
“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.”
