Orion Among the Stars

Chapter 9

Softly I shut the hatch. Swiftly I opened the one in the floor and slipped into the water. Closing it behind me, I swam back out into the open sea and used my flight pack to drive myself quickly away from the end of the tube, back to the structures that could hide me.

If the trio suspected that someone else had been in the air lock, they gave no sign of it. They came out, with helmets and flippers back in place, gathered up their tools and swam back toward the Skorpis base. I waited awhile, then followed at a more leisurely pace, bobbing up to the surface every few minutes to gulp in air, rather like a dolphin.

There were underwater piers at the Skorpis base, too, but they were far smaller than the ancient ruins. Only two of them, and so new that hardly a barnacle had attached itself to them as yet.

I could see above me the shadow of a pier built over the water’s surface, extending out the same length as this underwater shaft. Cautiously I rose to the surface for a fresh swallow of air. So far so good. I was almost inside the Skorpis base. Almost. It surprised me that the Skorpis had not set out electronic security systems underwater to protect their base from any possible seaborne threat. And the trio I had seen in the water had been unarmed. It was as if they expected no enemy attack, almost as if this was not a military base at all.

And there was at least one human working with them.

The sun was sinking into the sea, throwing a reddish gold glow over the wave tops. I treaded water for a while, bobbing up and down as each fresh crest of the incoming tide surged past me. I was close enough to the enemy to hear them walking along the pier above my head, to hear their voices as they worked and talked and complained about their situation the way all soldiers do everywhere, in any era.

“Protecting a litter of humans,” one voice griped. “This isn’t the life of a warrior.”

“Maybe you’d rather have been with Second Battalion,” said its companion.

“At least they got to use their claws.”

“They’re all dead. Is that what you want to be?”

“We should’ve sent in both battalions.”

“No, we shouldn’t have sent in either one. We should’ve nuked those hairless apes in the first place, not wasted a whole battalion trying to capture their damnable transceiver.”

“Well, anyway, we’re stuck with guard duty.”

“Do you trust ’em?”

“Who?”

“The humans, who else? They say they’re scientists, but do you think we can trust them? Or are they really spies?”

“How the hell should I know? They all look alike to me. The gray furs make those decisions.”

“Like the decision to try to capture the enemy transceiver.”

“Yes. Just like that.”

There was more than one human in the Skorpis camp. And they were scientists, apparently. My head buzzed with the possibilities. Perhaps this was the way for me to penetrate farther into their camp.

I gave the matter a few moments’ thought. No sense waiting until dark. Boldness might work where stealth would be detected.

Hoping that all humans truly did look alike to these Skorpis warriors, I wormed my shoulders out of the flight-pack harness and fastened it to the underside of the pier. With some feelings of trepidation, I also unbuckled my gunbelt and left the laser pistol and knife there, as well. Then I reached up, grabbed the edge of the pier and hauled myself up out of the water.

“Who the hell…?” The two Skorpis on the pier were evidently sentries. They both had rifles, which they immediately unslung from their shoulders and pointed at me.

“Identify yourself!” said the larger of the two. Both of them were enormous, towering above my height and twice my bulk.

“Orion,” I said, trying to smile disarmingly. “I got separated from the others and just made it back.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“Just arrived a few days ago,” I said.

“There’s been no resupply mission here for months,” said the Skorpis. Both their rifles were pointed at my chest.

Drawing myself up on my dignity, I answered as haughtily as I could, “I was brought here on a special flight, at great expense. At least your superiors recognize the value of a scientist, even if you don’t.”

They looked at each other. It was difficult to read the expression on their feline faces, but to me they seemed uncertain, fully suspecting that I was lying through my teeth but unable to be sure. Then they did what all soldiers in every era do when in doubt: they marched me to their commanding officer.

Thus I was trooped from one giant Skorpis to another, from the pier to the command post at its base, from the command post to the quarters of the officer of the guard. From there to the offices of the chief of security, where a Skorpis wearing a chestful of ribbons on a cinnamon-colored uniform eyed me with enormous suspicion from behind an airport-sized desk. There were no obvious gender characteristics among the Skorpis, at least none that I could detect with their uniforms on, but I knew from my briefing information that this security chief was a female, as all Skorpis officers were.

“You come out of the sea with no clothes, no equipment?”

I must admit that I did feel slightly foolish standing in front of her with nothing but a pair of shorts that were still dripping wet. “I am with the human scientists,” I said with as much dignity as I could command. “I was simply swimming near the base to check the structures that have been built underwater.”

“And you claim that you arrived three days ago.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“There has been no flight into this base since the fleet departed after the battle several weeks ago,” she growled at me.

“Take me to my fellow scientists,” I insisted. “They’ll vouch for me.”

“There has been no flight in here for several weeks,” she repeated.

“There was one. Perhaps you were not informed about it.”

“That is impossible. Who are you and where are you from?”

I kept insisting that she take me to the other human scientists. She studied me the way a cat studies a bird chirping on a limb, just out of reach.

“The only other humans on this planet were the assault team that we wiped out. Perhaps we didn’t exterminate all of you…” There was a heavily gouged square of wood on her desktop. Unconsciously, she scraped the unsheathed claws of one hand along it. Or was it unconsciously? I got the impression she would like to use her claws on me.

I continued my bluff. “If you’ll simply let me see my fellow scientists, I’m certain that all this confusion can be cleared up.”

She shook her head in a very human negative.

“What harm could it do?” I coaxed. “One single human, unarmed, in the midst of a whole baseful of warriors?”

“You could be carrying an explosive device inside you. You could be an android. A walking bomb. The humans are very clever that way.”

I shrugged carelessly. “Examine me, then. Probe me with search beams.”

“You’ve already been probed,” she replied. “While you’ve been standing here.”

“Have you found any explosives? Anything at all but normal human organs inside a normal human skin?”

“You humans are very clever,” she muttered again.

After nearly an hour of stubborn intransigence, she finally decided to march me personally—with a squad of six fully-armed warriors escorting us—to the part of the base where the human scientists were quartered.

“They sleep at night,” she said disdainfully as we walked through the camp. It was bustling with activity, much as a human camp would in early morning. “This will disturb them.”

It seemed to me that she did not mind disturbing the humans. Not in the slightest.

The humans were in a compound separated from the rest of the base by a fence of energy beams. Two Skorpis guards snapped to spine-popping attention as the officer approached. They turned off a section of the fence for us to walk through. The officer ordered our escort to remain at the fence. “Come if I call you,” she commanded them. They saluted as one single organism.

It was quiet inside the human compound. Most of the buildings were dark, although lights showed through the windows of one long, low-roofed structure.

“The humans eat their meals together,” the officer muttered, from somewhere in the darkness over my head. “They eat plants and pastes made by machines.” Her voice reeked with distaste.

I was tempted to tell her that some humans hunt for their meals. But I refrained.

Without knocking she opened the door to the mess hall—for that is what it was—and stepped inside. Floorboards creaked under her mass. I came in behind her.

Twenty-two men and women, each of them in drab coveralls, stopped eating and turned to stare at us, spoons and forks in midair, mouths open and eyes wide with surprise.

The officer grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and nearly hauled me off my feet.

“This one says he belongs with you,” she said, loud enough to rattle the windows. “Does he speak truth?”

A bearded man at the head of the table swallowed hard enough for me to see his Adam’s apple work up and down.

“He belongs with us, yes,” he said in a high, surprised voice.

The officer let go of me.

“When did he arrive? How?”

Before they could give a story that contradicted mine, I rattled, “On the special flight several days ago, just as I told you.” Desperately I hoped that none of the other humans would give me away.

“I know of no special flight.”

“It was only here very briefly,” said the man at the head of the table.

“You might have been out at the perimeter,” one of the women added, in a voice that trembled slightly.

“I can check all incoming flights in our computer records,” said the officer. “If he is lying, he will die. If you help him lie, you will die with him.”

The bearded man at the head of the table got to his feet. “You can’t threaten us so easily. We were sent here by the Hegemony high command. The work we have to do here is too important to the progress of the war for us to be bullied by Skorpis warriors.”

The officer hissed at him, just like a spitting cat. Then she said, with murderous calm, “The Hegemony orders us to protect you. If this human is a spy or a saboteur, he must be dealt with. If you help him, you are working against the Hegemony and you will be dealt with also.”

“Let us take care of him,” the bearded man said. “He’s no threat to you or anyone else.”

“You vouch for him? He is a scientist, as you are?”

The man started to nod, but one of the women down the table burst but, “We never saw him before! We don’t know who he is!”

“Randa!”

“It’s no good, Delos,” she said to the bearded one. “What we’re trying to accomplish here is too important to allow some spy to wreck everything!”

“You say he is a spy?” the officer thundered.

“None of us ever saw him before!” Randa fairly screamed. “Take him away. Open up his brain and find out who he is and why he’s here!”