“Eliminated?”
“The human race, the Skorpis, the Tsihn, all the warring species will be extinguished.”
“How? What do you intend to do?”
“The older species have maintained neutrality throughout your squabbles. But we cannot allow you to destroy the very stars on which the continuum hinges. Attempt to attack a single star, and we will eliminate you—all of you—completely.”
They spoke with one voice, an implacable finality in their tone.
“Go back to your Creators and tell them what we have said, Orion. The fate of many species depends on their reaction to our warning.”
I sat bolt upright on my bunk. Frede lay sleeping peacefully beside me, a little girl’s smile on her relaxed face.
The Old Ones were using me as a messenger again. It’s not enough that Aten manipulates me, the Old Ones use me to manipulate him and the other Creators.
But then I smiled. Did the Old Ones know my inner thoughts, my plans? I had hoped to use this scout ship to find Anya, somewhere deep in Hegemony territory. Now the Old Ones had given me a reason for seeking her. I had to warn her about the Commonwealth’s star-wrecker.
The third watch still had an hour to go when I came onto the bridge and relieved Dyer, my logistics/damage-control officer, who had the command. The watch was almost entirely perfunctory; as long as we were in superlight velocity there was nothing to worry about except a possible internal malfunction.
Taking the command chair, I ransacked the ship’s computer records for information about the Hegemony. Where was their capital planet? What kind of defenses guarded it? Would they honor a flag of truce on a Commonwealth ship?
The computer could not tell me, of course, if Anya was in the Hegemony’s capital. The data screens showed their capital planet, Prime, in the Zeta system. I viewed their cities and learned their population, history, economy, social customs, politics, military capabilities—much data, little understanding.
The screens showed Prime itself to be a gray, forbidding city of massive stone buildings rising out of dark cliffs into a heavy cloudy sky. Its streets were almost empty, swept by gusts of rain and sleet. Giant Skorpis warriors seemed to be at every intersection, serving as police or militia guards. The people of Prime looked grim, dour, humorless.
“Why the interest in Prime?”
I looked up from the screens surrounding my chair and saw Frede standing beside me, looking curious. At the touch of a keypad I blanked the screens.
“That’s where we’re going,” I said.
“Prime?” she squeaked. “But that’s the Hegemony’s capital!”
The four others on duty in the bridge turned and stared at us.
“I have secret orders,” I told her. But I didn’t say who the orders had come from. “We’re on a mission of diplomacy to Prime.”
“They’ll blow us out of the galaxy the instant we drop out of superlight,” Frede said.
“Let’s hope not.”
Reluctantly she followed my command to set course for the Hegemony capital. I planned to send out message capsules ahead of us once we neared the Zeta system, so the Hegemony defenders would be warned that we were coming and that our mission was a peaceful one. Frede and the rest of the crew thought the Hegemony ships would shoot first and check on our story after we were safely dead. The almost happy air about the ship dissolved into soldierly griping and dread.
There was something more that I could do, of course. That night, while Frede slept, I tried with all my energies to reach across the span of space-time and contact Anya. Nothing. It was like facing a blank wall too high to climb, too wide to go around.
So I reached out to Aten, instead. Concentrating on my memory of the Creators’ city, I translated myself to its timeless stasis in the continuum. I found myself standing atop a Mayan pyramid in the heart of the city, high enough to look out across its broad empty avenues toward the eternal sea. The sun’s warmth Was tempered slightly by the shimmering golden dome of energy that encased the city.
Aten looked surprised when I appeared. He and several other of the Creators were apparently locked deep in conference, there at the top of the steep stone pyramid. They were all standing together before the sacrificial altar: Aten in a white and gold military uniform; the dark-bearded one I thought of as Zeus in a comfortable tunic and slacks; rust-haired Ares; slim, sharp-eyed Hermes; and the beautiful redheaded woman who had styled herself Hera in an earlier age.