Orion Among the Stars

Chapter 15

When I came to my senses once more I was hanging in midair almost three meters above the team of human scientists, who stood craning their necks upward toward me.

I landed in their midst with a painful thump, knocking several of them to the metal plates of the flooring. I rolled over and sat up. Looking around, I saw it was obvious that we were no longer in the Skorpis base.

“What happened?” asked one of the scientists.

“Where are we?”

“Transceiver beam,” answered Delos. He was sitting beside me, rubbing the small of his back with both hands. He was one of the men I had bowled over when I fell.

“We’re aboard one of the fleet vessels, then,” I said.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Indeed it did. We were in a metal chamber, bare except for a slit of an observation window set high in one wall and a tightly closed hatch opposite it. I could feel the humming vibration of a starship’s engines through the deck plates.

Transceiver beam, I thought. The attacking fleet must have saturated the Skorpis defensive shield at last and then squirted the beam down to snatch us. The beam scanned our molecular patterns, annihilated us, then reproduced us here on the ship exactly as we were on the planet. That was why I materialized nearly three meters above the others; they had been in the shelter and I was at the lip of their trapdoor when the beam found us.

The transceiver beam had killed us, all of us, then rebuilt us here aboard the starship. No one willingly allows himself to be transported by a matter transceiver.

But we were not asked.

“We’re prisoners, then,” said Randa.

“Maybe not,” I said. “They may not understand who you are.”

“Welcome to the Blood Hunter,” came a voice from above us. Looking up, I saw a red reptilian face glaring down at us from the observation window. This was a Tsihn ship, I realized.

I got to my feet and helped Delos and the others to theirs. The hatch swung open and a pair of reptilians entered the chamber, scaly green and lightly built, so alike I could not tell the difference between them.

“You will come with us,” said one of them through the translator it carried on a thin chain around its neck.

The scientists were put into a fairly spacious compartment lined with bunks, like a barracks. I saw toilet facilities at the far end of the chamber.

“Which of you is the one called Orion?” asked one of the twins.

“I am,” I answered.

“You will see the captain on the bridge.” So I followed the green little reptilians—after they had carefully closed and locked the hatch to the scientists’ barracks.

The bridge was compact and quiet. The reptilians do not make noise the way we mammalians do. I found it almost eerie the way every station was manned with reptiles of various size and hue, yet hardly a sound issued from any of them. There was no air of tension on the bridge. Only two of the lizards had their cyborg connectors plugged into the ship’s sensors. The battle seemed to be finished.

The Tsihn captain was almost my size. It sat in its command chair and looked me over the way a snake studies its prey. Its scales were mottled green and yellow with some gray spots here and there. Much of its upper torso was covered with insignias and markings of rank. Its snout was wide and filled with tiny needle-like teeth.

“You have no uniform?”

I realized I was still in my threadbare shorts. Before I could reply, it said, “We will provide you with a proper uniform.”

“Thank you,” I said.

It seemed decidedly unhappy. “I have lost many capable Tsihn to rescue you and the other humans.”

“You arrived too late,” I said. “The men and women of my assault team have been frozen by the Skorpis.”

The reptile’s tongue darted out from between those teeth, flicked back and forth for an instant, then retreated.

“So your team goes into the Skorpis bellies.”

“You can still pick them up, if you haven’t destroyed their base altogether.”

“Not destroyed,” it said. “My orders were to locate you and bring you and the other humans to my ship. This I did. I bombarded the Skorpis base, overloaded their shield, and snatched you from them. It cost me a dozen Tsihn killed, many more wounded.”

“But my troopers are still down there on the planet, frozen!”

“No concern. I have obeyed my orders. You are the one I was commanded to rescue. And those with you.”

“But those are not my troops.” I tried to make it understand. “My troops are still with the Skorpis.”

“Yes, frozen, I know.” The tongue flicked out again; then it asked, “So who are the humans with you?”

“Scientists,” I said.

“I was told you would be with an assault team, not a pack of scientists.”

I hesitated. If I revealed to the reptilian that these humans were enemies, what would it do?

It saw through my silence. “Scientists of the Hegemony, is that it?”

“They were studying the planet, trying to make contact with intelligent creatures in the sea. They are not soldiers,” I said.

“But they serve the enemy.”

“The Skorpis were there to protect them.”

The captain hissed in a way that almost sounded like laughter. “Some protectors! We snatched them right from between their claws!”

“But my troop is still there,” I repeated. “They’re the ones you were supposed to rescue. You must go back—”

“Go back!” it snapped. “By now the Hegemony has a whole battle fleet swarming around Lunga. I have only four ships, two of them badly damaged by the Skorpis ground defenses. My mission was to sneak in and rescue you, not to take on a Hegemony battle fleet. We don’t go back. We run away as fast as we can.”

“But my troopers—”

“Can’t be helped. Not now. This is war, human. Losses are to be expected.”

Not my troopers, I said to myself. Not Frede and Jerron and the rest of them. They’ve suffered enough. They’ve been through battle and done everything we asked of them. I’m not going to leave them to feed the Skorpis.

“Tell me about these scientists,” the captain was saying to me. “They must have valuable information in their heads, no?”

“They’re not military scientists,” I said, warily. “They don’t know anything about weapons or strategy.”

“Still, they are a good prize to bring back to headquarters. A bonus. I will be praised.”

“You’d be praised more if you brought back the troopers you were sent to rescue,” I grumbled.

Its red eyes seemed to burn. “Orion, I was sent to rescue you. That I have done. My orders said to bring up any humans with you. That I have done, also.”

I stood my ground and glowered back at it.

It shifted in its chair, then raised one taloned three-fingered hand. “Take the helm,” it said to its second-in-command. Then it curled one of those taloned fingers and said, “Come with me, Orion.”

Mutely I followed it through a hatch that we both had to duck through and into a small, dimly lit compartment. I saw a wide bunk built into one bulkhead, a desk with a blank display screen above it. The captain’s quarters, I guessed, spare and spartan.

“Sit,” it commanded. There was only one chair, a stool, actually, in front of the desk. The captain eased its bulk onto the bed. It reached to a panel at the head of its bunk and a section of the bulkhead turned transparent.

I gasped. We were out in deep space, nothing to see but stars that were stretching into elongated streaks of light because of our ship’s relativistic speed.

“We run with our tails between our legs, Orion,” the captain said good-naturedly. “Soon we reach lightspeed and then there is nothing out there to see.”

I looked back at it and saw that it was holding a metal drinking cup out to me.

“Alcoholic beverage made from grain,” it said. “I keep this for human guests.”

“Thank you.” I accepted the cup.

It reached into the compartment in its bunk again and poured something else into another cup. “Tsihn prefer drinks with blood in them.”

We touched cups and drank. The liquor was smooth and warming.

“Many intelligent species have rituals of sharing food or drink to show friendship,” said the captain. “I want you to know that even though I cannot rescue your assault team, I wish to be friendly with you.”

“I understand,” I said.

“War is never pretty. But maybe for your troops this is a better fate than they might have expected. They are frozen now. They feel nothing.”

“But they must have known what the Skorpis intended when they were put into the freezer cells,” I said. “Their last thoughts must have been hell.”

I realized that its darting tongue was the Tsihn equivalent of a sigh. “So what better did they have to look forward to? Your Commonwealth does not regard warriors with honor. The Hegemony, too. Humans treat their warriors very strangely, Orion.”

“They treat them as if they’re less than human,” I admitted.

“Yes. Send them to do fighting, then freeze them when fighting’s over.” It shook its head. “Your warriors are treated like machines. Worse.”

“I would still like to save them, if I could. I’d like to help them, find a place where they could live in peace and safety, without the Commonwealth forcing them to go into battle, without being frozen like some unwanted slabs of meat until they’re needed again.” I was thinking out loud now, letting my thoughts spin out to this stranger who was not human in form but more human than my own Creators in its sympathy.

“Put it out of your mind, Orion,” said the captain. “I would like to retire to a planet I saw once, green and lush and so humid that steam rises from the swamps every morning of its year. But I will die in a metal egg, Orion. I will spend my life aboard this ship or another like it and one day, somewhere, I will be killed. That is the life of a warrior. That is what we are, Orion, you and I and all those others of so many different species. We were hatched to fight our peoples’ battles. There is no other life for any of us.”

I sat in that cramped compartment sipping at the whisky this reptilian captain had given me while we grew more morose and bitter. At last I pushed myself to my feet and asked it to excuse me. It ordered one of its bridge crew to show me to my quarters, which turned out to be a compartment almost identical to the captain’s. The Tsihn showed me how to manipulate the controls to make the bulkhead transparent and to tap into the ship’s communicator and computer systems. It slid back a panel and I saw a closet with two sets of uniforms hanging in it.

Once the reptilian left me alone, I slid the closet shut and stretched out on the bunk. It was a little short for me, but I did not care. I had no intention of sleeping in it.

I summoned the Golden One. I called across the currents of space-time to him. Speak to me, I urged. Give me a moment of your attention.

Nothing. He would not answer. I could have translated myself back to the Creators’ city, but what good would that have done? Aten would not deign to see me there. The last time he had sent his messenger. I did not want a messenger, I wanted Aten himself, the Golden One.

But he would not reply to me. When I closed all my senses and tried to reach out to him with my mind, I received nothing but emptiness.

Wait! There was something. A tendril of thought. The faintest whisper of a contact.

Friend Orion, said the Old Ones. You have survived the battle.

But my troopers, I called to the Old Ones. They have been frozen. They will be killed.

You want to save them.

I can’t do it by myself. Can you help me?

We do not interfere in any way, Orion. We have made that pledge and we will keep it.

But my troopers…

We feel your pain, Orion. You are gaining in wisdom. Pain is the price of wisdom.

Is there no way they can be saved?

That is for you to determine, friend. Use all your resources. Reach out to grasp the opportunities that surround you.

What opportunities?I asked.

But there was no further response. The Old Ones had said what they wanted to say and departed from my mind.

Use all your resources, they had told me. Grasp the opportunities that surround you.

I swung my legs off the bunk and reached across the narrow compartment to activate the ship’s computer. Through the transparent bulkhead I could see that we were still flying at relativistic velocity, not yet beyond lightspeed. I called up the tactical program and saw that there was indeed a full squadron of Hegemony battle cruisers chasing after us. The tactical plot showed that we would reach lightspeed before they came within weapons’ range. Once past lightspeed we would be safe.

We would also be unable to send back a ship toward Lunga to pick up my troopers. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it before we got to lightspeed.

I had less than two hours to act.