“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
“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
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 glimpse 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
