Ben Bova - Orion 5 - Orion Among the Stars.pdf

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Ben Bova
Orion Among the Stars
To Paul Spencer, Tommy Atkins, and all their cousins.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap...
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot...
Rudyard Kipling - Tommy
Prologue
This time death was like being in the center of a whirlpool, inside the heart
of a roaring tornado. The universe spun madly, time and space whirling into a
dizzying blur, planets and stars and atoms and electrons racing in wild orbits
with me in the middle of it all, falling, falling endlessly into a
cryogenically cold oblivion.
Gradually all sensation left me. It might have taken moments or millennia, I
had no way to gauge time, but all feeling of motion and cold seeped away from
me, as if I were being numbed, frozen, turned into an immobile, insensate
block of ice.
Still my mind continued to function. I knew I was being translated across
space-time, from one cusp of the continuum to another. Yet for all I could see
or touch or hear, I was in total oblivion. For a measureless tune I almost
felt glad to be free of the wheel of life at last, beyond pain, beyond desire,
beyond the agonizing duty that the Creators forced upon me.
Beyond love.
That stirred me. Somewhere in the vast reaches of space-time Anya was
struggling against forces that I could not even comprehend, in danger despite
her godlike powers, facing enemies that frightened even the Golden One and the
other Creators.
I reached out with my mind, seeking to penetrate the blank darkness that
engulfed me. Nothing. It was as if there was no universe, no continuum,
neither time nor space. But I knew that somewhere, sometime, she existed. She
had loved me as I had loved her. Nothing in all the universes of existence
would keep us apart.
A glimmer of light. So fault and distant that at first I thought it might be
merely my imagination obeying my desire. But yes, it truly was there. A
faintest, faintest glow. Light. Warmth.
Whether I moved to it or it moved to me mattered not at all to me. The glow
grew and brightened until I seemed to be hurtling toward it like a chip thrown
into a furnace, like a meteor drawn to a star. The light blazed like the sun
now and I threw my arms across my eyes to ease the pain, delighted that I had
eyes and arms and could feel again.
"Orion," came a voice from that blinding, overpowering radiance. "You have
returned."
It was Aten, of course, the Golden One. He resolved his presence into human
form, a powerful godlike figure with a thick golden mane, robed in shimmering
gold, almost too bright for me to look upon.
He stood before me in an utterly barren landscape that stretched toward
infinity in every direction. A featureless plain of billowing mist that played
about our ankles, an empty bowl of sky above us the color of hammered copper.
"Where is Anya?" I asked.
"Far from here."
"I must go to her. She is in great danger."
"So are we all, Orion."
"I don't care about you or the others. It is Anya I care for."
A faint hint of a smirk curled the corners of his lips. "What you care or
don't care about is inconsequential, Orion. I created you to do my bidding."
"I want to be with Anya."
"Impossible. There are other tasks for you to perform, creature."
I stared into his golden eyes and knew that he had the power to send me where
he chose. But I had powers, too, powers that were growing and strengthening.
"I will find her," I said.
He laughed scornfully. But I knew that whatever he did, wherever he sent me, I
would seek the woman I loved, the goddess who loved me. And I would not cease
until I found her.
Chapter 1
I found myself confined in a featureless gray enclosure, the curving wall of a
smooth plastic cocoon so close upon me that I could not lift my head without
bumping it. I lay on my back, disoriented, blinking eyes that felt gummy with
sleep. My arms were pressed close to my sides; there was scant room for me to
move them. But I edged one hand along the curving wall of my chamber. It felt
blood-warm. Yet I was chilled, as cold inside as a frozen corpse.
I could remember dying, more than once. I recalled freezing to death in a
frigid landscape of snow and ice and bitter, merciless winds. The numbness of
the cold had been a mercy then; my body had been torn to bloody ribbons by a
cave bear.
A mechanical click snapped me to the here and now. I heard a soft beeping
sound, strangely annoying. Then the curved plastic cover abruptly swung open.
Immediately a chill white mist enveloped me. I shivered and tried to sit up.
It took an effort.
Propping myself on one elbow, I squinted through the icy mist. I was in a
large room. Featureless gray walls. Low ceiling that glowed with cold bluish
light. The floor was lined with large objects that looked to me like coffins.
Dozens of them, a hundred, perhaps. And that irritating beeping sound, soft
yet insistent, like a worry gnawing at the back of your mind. One at a time,
and then in twos and threes, the lids of the coffinlike capsules swung back
with soft sighing sounds, like the slightest of breezes wafting through the
nodding limbs of a forest. Cold whitish mist drifted up from each of them. The
beeping stopped when the last of them opened.
Men and women began pulling themselves up to sitting positions, rubbing their
eyes, stretching their arms, looking around the room. I could see that they
were young, slim, physically fit. They looked so much like each other that
they could have been brothers and sisters. At first I thought they were
siblings from two or three families. They wore nothing at all. Completely
naked, men and women alike. Just as I was.
The room suddenly jolted sideways, as if some giant hand had slammed it. A
dull, distant boom reverberated through the mist-filled air. I almost fell off
my bier. Several people gasped or yelled out in surprise. An earthquake? No.
Only that one shock.
I swung my legs to the floor and stood up, tentatively, testing my strength,
keeping a grip on the edge of the coffin or sarcophagus or whatever it was. A
cryonic sleep capsule, I realized, not knowing how I knew. That is what it
was. The room was crammed with row upon row of cryonic sleep capsules. The men
and women in here with me had just been awakened from death. Or the next thing
to it.
"Who is in charge of this squad?"
I turned toward the challenging, impatient voice. And stiffened with sudden
fear and hatred. Standing in the hatch was a reptilian, a bipedal lizard
decked in green and gray scales, insignia painted on its chest and shoulders,
an equipment web strapped around its torso, the stub of a rudimentary tail
visible between its legs. It was only about shoulder-high to me, not yet fully
grown.
One of Set's offspring! Every nerve in me burned with hatred, every muscle
tensed for battle. But I had killed Set long ago, in the howling agony that
took him and his whole brood of reptilian invaders. And he had killed me. I
remembered dying then, back in the age when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and the
Sun's dwarf companion star had not yet been crushed down to the planet
Jupiter.
And this reptile was different. Its face was more lizard-like, with a snout
full of teeth and a single bony crest atop its skull. The eyes were mere
slits, glittering like a snake's, but they were set forward and scanned us
with intelligent scorn.
"Come on! Shake out of it! You've been sleeping long enough," it said. Its
voice issued from a tiny jeweled medallion it wore on a gold chain around its
neck.
"Who's in charge here?" it asked again.
"I am," I said, realizing the truth of it as I spoke the words. "My name is
Orion, captain of this hundred."
Those glittering eyes fixed on me. "Very well, Orion. Get your troops on their
feet and ready for action-"
Another jolt rocked the room. This time it felt like an explosion. And sounded
like one, too. The troops tottered and staggered. I grabbed the edge of my
sleep capsule to keep from falling down.
The reptilian made a slight hissing noise. "You've got to be ready for action
in one hour. That's an order, soldier."
It ducked back through the hatch. I realized that its equipment web was empty,
mere decoration. We were going into action, all right, but it wasn't.
The mist from the sleepers was almost completely gone. The troops were
standing uncertainly, still unsure of themselves, their minds still fogged
with cryonic sleep.
"All right," I said, loudly and firmly, "you heard what the lizard said. We're
going into action. Fall in!"
They eyed me suspiciously, sullenly almost, but pulled themselves together and
formed files alongside their sleeper units. Sergeants stood at the head of
each row, and three lieutenants-two of them women-marched barefooted to the
front of the room and stood at attention before me. No one seemed distressed
by their nudity.
I did not know these troopers. I had been placed in their command just before

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