Orion Among the Stars

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.”

“That battle is finished,” it said grandly. “The Skorpis fleet has been driven off.”

“Good.”

Those red slitted eyes stared at me. “You see, to me all you humans look alike. How can we tell if you are truly a Commonwealth soldier or a Hegemony spy? The same applies to your crew, as well.”

I realized that my true story would sound ludicrously fraudulent to it. “You have brainwave scanners, don’t you? You can easily see if I’m telling the truth.”

“Ah, the truth,” breathed my reptilian interrogator, almost like a human professor of philosophy. “What is the truth, Orion? You could tell me a tale that you believe to be true, and yet it might simply be a set of memories implanted in your mind by Hegemony intelligence operatives.”

I shrugged. “Then what’s the point of this questioning?”

It cocked its lizard’s head to one side. “Why, to hear what you have to say. To determine if there is any valuable information in your story. That’s the least we can do before we execute you and your crew.”

Chapter 31

So I told my Tsihn interrogator my whole story, even the truth about Aten and the other Creators. It listened with great interest, I thought, although it was impossible to read any expression on its reptilian face. But it was polite and even seemed curious, interrupting me with questions time and again.

All through my long narration, though, a part of my mind kept repeating to me that they were going to kill me. Kill Frede and Jerron and the rest of my crew. Why? Why execute loyal soldiers who had fought so hard for them?

It was my fault. I had disobeyed orders and taken them to Prime. As far as the Commonwealth was concerned, I was a traitor, and very likely a spy from the Hegemony. My crew was going to die because of me.

But then I began to think of the other factors. Somewhere in this mess was Aten, the Golden One, trying to manipulate the humans, their allies, their enemies, even the other Creators. He would kill Anya now that he had her in his possession. And I had delivered her to him.

“He’ll kill you, too,” I told my interrogator.

The young Tsihn blinked its yellow eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“Aten doesn’t want his creatures to know that he is manipulating them. He doesn’t want the Commonwealth to know that this war is being fought because of an argument among the Creators.”

The Tsihn officer was silent for a long moment. Then it said, “Either you are a very creative liar, Orion, or an absolute psychotic. Your invention of the Creators has some aspect of poetry to it, I must admit, but you carry it too far.”

“He’ll kill you to keep my story from leaking out,” I said.

“I am not one of his creatures—if he exists at all.”

“How many Tsihn have died in this war? How many more will be killed?”

“That’s enough, Orion,” said the reptilian. “This session is finished.”

I climbed to my feet, legs tingling from sitting so long. “Your life is now in danger,” I told it. Jerking a thumb toward the guards at the door, I added, “Theirs, too.”

The Tsihn remained on his stool, barely eye level with me. “Nonsense,” it scoffed.

“Is it? I presume this session has been recorded, even though I don’t see any equipment.”

Its eyes darted to a corner of the ceiling.

“Play back the recording. See if it’s intact. I’ll bet it’s already been erased.”

“Nonsense,” it said again. But it sounded just a bit weaker to me. It ordered the guards to take me back to my cell. They said not a word to me.

As the cell door slammed behind me, I knew there was only one person who could save my crew from execution. I threw myself on the bare thongs of the cot and squeezed my eyes shut in concentration. Aten was nearby; I could feel his presence, almost smell him.

But he refused to make contact with me. As I tried, I sensed a blank wall, like an energy screen he had built around himself to keep me away from him.

Very well, then. I went elsewhere. I gathered my strength and my knowledge and tried to contact the Old Ones. I called across the light-years for their aid, their wisdom.

Stop the war, Orion, they told me.

“How? What can I do? I can’t even protect my own crew; we’re all going to be executed.”

Find the strength, they said.

“Help me,” I pleaded. “If you want this war to be stopped, then help me.”

A vague sigh of disappointment. It is your problem, Orion, not ours. The problem of the human race. We will not make ourselves your guardians, your conscience, your protectors. You must do it for yourselves.

“You would exterminate us,” I countered.

Only if you become a threat to stars themselves. We have no right to interfere unless you begin to threaten the life of the entire galaxy with your violence.

And they showed me why they were concerned. I saw whole stars exploding, one after another. In a closely packed star cluster, a chain reaction began, dozens of stars erupting into shattering cataclysm, the shock waves from each explosion triggering dozens more, hundreds more. I saw whole galaxies torn apart by titanic explosions at their cores that engulfed millions of stars, tens of millions of planets, countless living creatures. Whole civilizations, intelligent species that had struggled for millennia to reach out among the stars, wiped out in smothering waves of explosions that ripped across megaparsecs, destroying everything in their path, reducing flesh and mind and hope to wildly contorted clouds of ionized gas.

This has been done in other galaxies by intelligences very much like your own, the Old Ones told me. This we cannot permit here. We have no desire to be your guardian angels, Orion, but we will be your angels of death if you try to destroy the stars.

I opened my eyes and found myself still in my cell, alone, abandoned by the Old Ones, shunned by the Creators, without even a rat to keep me company. Somewhere the Tsihn were interrogating Frede and the others, I knew. Somewhere an execution squad was waiting for us. I wondered if Captain Perry would be invited to watch.