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.