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.”