Orion Among the Stars

Chapter 10

Everyone in the mess hall froze, frightened, faces contorted with shock and uncertainty. Even the huge Skorpis security officer stood stock-still for a moment, just as stunned by Randa’s revelation as the other humans.

In that flash of a moment I acted. It was either move or die, and I had no intention of dying.

I spun on the ball of my foot and punched the security officer as hard as I could on her chin. She staggered backward, knees buckling. Before she could recover I bolted across the mess hall, vaulting clean over the table while several of the humans shrieked and hurling myself through one of the windows. I crashed through and landed head-first on the hard-baked ground outside. I could hear the security officer bellowing like a lioness in heat as I rolled to my feet and ran for the energy fence that enclosed the human compound.

It was more than two meters high, but I cleared it with room to spare. Fear augments athletic skills. Now I could hear shouting behind me as I raced through the square tents and more permanent structures of the Skorpis camp. There were plenty of the huge warriors in sight, working, digging, marching in the darkness of the night. They seemed more surprised than alarmed as I sprinted past them, heading for the beach and the sea.

I knew the officer I had slugged would radio her security detail to head me off. And sure enough, I could see teams of warriors bustling out of the buildings at the base of the twin piers up ahead. More shouts behind me and a laser bolt crackling bright red lanced past my ear. A warning shot. They won’t try to kill me, I reasoned. They want me alive for questioning. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t gleefully burn my legs off.

I dodged behind one of the metal prefabricated buildings and started running off at a tangent to the beach. The piers were out, too well guarded. But if I could get to the water perhaps I could wait awhile, then swim back to the place where I had stashed my flight pack and weapons. If the Skorpis did not find them first.

As I bolted around the corner of another building, angling off toward the beach once more, a team of six Skorpis suddenly loomed ahead of me. All of them armed with rifles. I gave them no chance to aim at me. I dived into them with a rolling block, barreling into their legs, knocking several of them down. My senses were in overdrive, and I saw them tangling each other’s arms and legs, cursing and snarling as they tried to pull themselves loose and get at me. I grabbed the rifle out of the hands of one of them, clubbed him to his knees with its butt, then flipped it around and fired into them point-blank.

I had no time to see how much damage I had done. Leaving them writhing on the ground, I dashed off toward the beach once again. To my left I could see a squad of Skorpis running along the sand in my direction. I had to get to the water before they saw me.

Too late. They saw in the dark much better than I did, and they quickly fired several rifle blasts at my feet, puffing up gritty pebbles and sand. I skidded to a stop and they ceased shooting and came running toward me.

I fired from the hip, one-handed, and knocked the closest two of them down. Then I flung myself face-first on the ground as the rest of them dropped to their knees and shot back at me.

There was no time for a firefight. If they pinned me down here for more than a few moments, the whole Skorpis base would be upon me. I had no choice. I leaped to my feet, firing as I ran, and raced for the water as fast as my legs would carry me.

My firing made them duck their heads a bit, but before I had taken a dozen strides a laser bolt seared my hip. I spun around, staggered, then drove on toward the water. Clamping down on the blood vessels, shutting off the pain signals, I limped toward the sea, only a tantalizingly dozen or so meters away now.

Another bolt hit my leg and I flopped down, rolled, and used my rifle to haul myself up again. I hopped, hobbled, staggered for the water as the Skorpis warriors came running toward me.

“Alive!” I heard one of them yell. “Take him alive!”

That was my one hope. I shot two more of the warriors as I tottered for the water. More laser blasts hit me, in the legs, in the chest. They were no longer worried about preserving me for interrogation; I was hitting too many of them.

I splashed into the surf, still firing, still being hit. Despite my rigid self-control I felt as if my legs had been burned off. Another bolt burned my shoulder so badly that I dropped the rifle. It hissed as its hot barrel struck the water.

The world was spinning. The surf surging against my bloodied legs, knocking me over as more laser blasts lanced past my head. They were shooting to kill.

I crawled into the waves, letting the water surge over me, cool and stinging with salt. Like a crab I scrabbled along the sandy bottom as the water flowed over my head, covering me, protecting me from their merciless lasers. I tasted salt water in my mouth, felt it filling my nose. I was deep enough now to float up off the bottom and let the current carry me out farther from the land.

There was not much skin on me that was unburned, I knew. Despite my control of the pain signals, my body was telling me that it was almost gone. Legs useless, one arm burned to the bone, another searing wound in my chest.

I floated to the surface and gulped cool night air. I did not have the strength to swim. I was going to die again, and this time I knew that the Golden One had no intention of reviving me. I had failed in my mission. Failed him. Failed myself.

I would never see Anya again. Never look into her gray solemn eyes. Never feel her touch, hear her voice.

The Golden One had abandoned me to die here on this miserable planet. They had all abandoned me, all the Creators. Even Anya.

A bitter torrent of regret surged through me. Somewhere deep in my mind I could hear Aten’s scornful laughter telling me that he knew I would fail him. I was merely a creature, after all. How dare I presume to love one of the Creators? I was made to be their tool, not their equal.

Regret. Love for Anya. Hatred for the Golden One. All these emotions flooded through me as I bobbed in the swells of that unnamed ocean, dying.

And something else. Something that I had never realized existed within me came to the front of my consciousness. Me. Myself. The individual who is Orion. Not the slave of the Golden One. Not even the lover of the goddess Anya. Myself. It did not matter how I was created or by whom. It did not matter who I loved or who loved me. I exist. I live and breathe and love and hate. I will not tamely die, mourning my failures, bemoaning my fate.

I pulled what little strength was left in my battered body and concentrated every atom of my will. There are paths through space-time, I knew. The continuum is like an ocean, and there are currents in it that can carry you from one place-time to another.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought back to all the times I had been translated through the continuum of space-time. Could I move myself voluntarily? Could I reach that city of the Creators, the city I had saved from Set’s destruction, the city that they kept safe in its own protective bubble of energy?

With my eyes tight closed I could not see the stars in the night sky. My body grew cold, numb. I no longer felt the bobbing of the sea. Colder I grew, cryogenically cold for an endless moment.

And then I felt the warmth of sunlight on my naked skin. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a meadow on a hillside. And below me lay the magnificent city of the Creators beneath its radiant sphere of energy, rising beside a calm blue sea.

A city of monuments and heroic statues, all dedicated to the Creators themselves. Pyramids and temples from every era, every culture of Earth. A city empty of people, except for the handful of Creators, the self-styled masters of the human race who had allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. They had translated the monuments that adoring humans had built to them, accumulating them into this glowing city devoted to their own gratifications.

I rose to my feet. My body was whole and strong. The breeze from the sea was cool, the sun high overhead warming. I walked through wildflowers down the hill toward the city. Deer bounded in the woods farther off to my right. Rabbits hurried through the grass at my feet, stopping now and then to stare at me, noses twitching.

The city was empty. I knew that there were robots and mechanical conveniences waiting to be summoned by mere thought. But the Creators were not there, not one of them. I felt disappointed, yet not surprised. Aten had told me that they were scattered among the stars, struggling to resolve this ultimate crisis that they faced. Yet, to beings who can come and go through space-time at will, why were none of them here in their home base at this particular nexus in the continuum?

I wandered on, asking myself what I expected of this visit and getting nothing but a vague sense of uneasiness by way of an answer.

Past the Mayan Temple of the Sun I strolled, alone in the ageless city. Past the Parthenon and the great golden reclining Buddha that seemed to be grinning at me, knowingly. I walked through the city from one side to the other until I was at the base of the massive pyramid of Khufu, out beyond the Colossus of Rhodes.

I turned the corner of the great pyramid and there was the ocean, clean and glittering beneath the sun, waves washing up on the beach with curls of froth as they broke gently against the sand. The sea called to me and I walked into it, wading up to my hips before I slid in and began swimming slowly out toward the distant horizon.

“Welcome, friend Orion,” said a dolphin that popped up beside me. “We are happy to see you back among us.”

“Back among you?” I asked.

I saw that I was surrounded by the grinning sea mammals, gray and sleek and each as big as five men or more. It was no surprise to me that I understood their clicks and whistles. But I was surprised that they understood my tongue.

“It’s been a long time since we hunted the fast-darting tuna together,” said the nearest dolphin.

“Or went diving to the lair of the giant squid,” said another.

“Where are the Creators?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“The other two-legs? They have been gone for long ages, Orion.”

“They aren’t much fun. They argue among themselves most of the time.”

“They forget that we can hear them. Our sense of hearing is very acute.”

“I know,” I said, grinning back at them as I treaded water.

“Come!” said the nearest one. “There’s a whole school of tuna not more than five kilometers from here. Let’s feast on them!”

“Wait!” I begged. “I can’t swim that far.”

“No need for you to swim, friend Orion. Ride on my back the way you used to so many tides ago.”

“If you don’t mind carrying me…”

“Of course not! One hunter to another, we are all friends here in the sea.”

So I slid one leg across his smooth back and clutched his dorsal fin with both my hands and off we went on a wild splashing ride, the dolphin racing powerfully, smoothly through the ocean, dipping down below the surface to run as fast as possible, then sliding up to blow steamy stale air through his vent and pull in a gulp of fresh air with a wet sucking noise. I did the same each time he popped to the surface. If the individual dolphins had names I never learned them; they seemed to know each other without the need for such tags.

They said I had gone hunting with them before, that we were old friends. I had no memory of it whatsoever, but I did not let that interfere with my enjoyment of this wild splashing ride through the ocean. The water was clear as air down to a considerable depth, with the sun lighting it up. If it weren’t for the bubbles and the swarms of colorful fish darting all around us, I would not have thought we were underwater.

And then would come the splashing, frothing moment of breaking the surface, taking a fresh gulp of air. And then down below we would go again, sliding along smoothly on the powerful strokes of their tails.

Soon enough we came to the tuna school, big silver-gray sleek speedsters who turned and fled at the approach of the tribe of dolphins. Fast as the tuna were, though, the dolphins were faster. We split up into several smaller groups, circling around the school of tuna to set up a trap, much as the Mongols did on their great hunts each year. I slid free of my mount and hovered with a few of the older dolphins, treading water as I waited for the circlers to drive the prey toward us.

“Don’t let them get past you!” my friend clicked gleefully as he dashed off. Underwater, I could not reply to him.

The tuna panicked and tried to evade the trap. The dolphins snapped them up in their grinning jaws by the dozens, by the hundred, gulping them down one after another. I grabbed one, more than enough for me to handle, bit through its spine to kill it and then let myself float to the surface with the big fish in my hands.

“Only one, friend Orion?” my friend teased. “This is the mighty hunter?”

I laughed as I tore at the clean fresh meat of the tuna. “How many deer can you chase down, legless one? How many rabbits can you outrun?”

I saw the dark fins of sharks circling in the distance, attracted by our slaughter of the tuna, but they kept away from the dolphins. As the sun began to slide toward the sea, we swam back to the beach by the Creators’ city, with me riding my friend’s back again.

Finally I was wading toward the beach. I stopped while still waist-deep in the water and shouted a farewell to the dolphins.

“Thanks for the hunt,” I called.

“The sea is good, friend Orion. Too bad you aren’t a dolphin, or at least a whale. You are a good companion, for a two-leg.”

“And you are good friends, all of you. Thanks for sharing your hunt with me.”

“The sea will always be your friend, Orion. It is good in the water.”

With that, they turned and headed out to the deeper waters, leaving me to stagger back up the beach and throw myself on the warm sand for the lowering sun to dry me.

The sea will always be my friend, they said. Yet there was a place in space-time where I was floating helpless in the sea, wounded and dying.

I returned to that place.