“Loris,” I said without words, without sound or the body to speak with. Into the blank emptiness of the void between space-times, I gathered Anya and my crew and willed us to the planet Loris.
CHAPTER 30
Voices struck at me.
“What is it?”
“How can it be?”
“They just—appeared! Pop! Just like that.”
I opened my eyes, glad that I had eyes and ears and an existence in the world again.
We were in a wide, sunny city plaza, what was left of us. Frede still leaned against the cryo capsule, pointing her rifle at me. The others of my crew were slumped against the capsule’s curved flank. The side that had faced the Skorpis’s guns was so hot that it steamed in the afternoon air.
The plaza was filled with people. Well-dressed men and women. The buildings that lined the spacious open square were all graceful towers of glass and gleaming metal. The square was paved with colorful tiles. A fountain sprayed water barely a dozen meters from where we had landed. The people gaped at us as if we were ghosts or some strange alien apparition. More people were gathering around us, talking, pointing, staring.
We were a grimy crew. Bloody, sweaty, aching and parched from our deadly battle. Eighteen of us still alive. Our uniforms were torn, our faces streaked with dirt.
“Who are they?” an elderly woman asked.
“How dare they show themselves here?”
“I think they’re soldiers!”
“Soldiers? You mean, from the army?”
“What are they doing here?”
“They must be soldiers of some sort. Look at the guns they’re carrying.”
“You’re not permitted to carry weapons in the capital,” a cross-faced man shouted at us. “I’ve summoned the police.”
“They smell terrible!”
“Yes, we smell terrible and we look terrible,” I shouted at them. “We’ve been fighting and dying to save you from being invaded.”
They gasped.
“He’s insane!”
“The whole group—look at them! Obvious lunatics.”
“Where are the police? I called for them more than a minute ago.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. “Don’t you realize there’s a battle going on in orbit above you? Don’t you know you’re at war?”
“It’s some sort of trick.”
“New theater. The younger generation always tries to shock their elders.”
One of the gray-haired women stepped up to me, barely as tall as my collarbone. “See here, young man, there’s no use trying to frighten us. The war is being fought a thousand light-years away from here.”
I shook my head in a combination of disbelief and disgust, then turned away from her and went over to what was left of my crew.
Frede and the rest of my crew were just as stunned as the civilians. She lowered her rifle, slumped against the sleep capsule and let herself slide down to a sitting position. The others sprawled, exhausted, on the brightly colored tile pavement.
“This is Loris?” Frede asked.
I nodded. “The capital of the Commonwealth.”
One of the men came over and glared at me. “You can’t stay here,” he told me sternly. “This is a public plaza, not an army barracks.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” I asked, controlling my temper.
“That’s not for me to decide. But—Ah! Here come the police, at last.”
The crowd made a path for a pair of gleaming robots that glided on flight packs a few centimeters above the pavement. Legless, they had six arms, cylindrical torsos, and domed heads that bore sensors and speaker grilles.
“Please identify yourselves,” said the one on my left.
“We are the survivors of the crew of the scout ship Apollo,” I said. “We escaped the battle—”
“One moment, please.” The robot put out one clawed hand in a very human gesture. Then it said, “Records indicate that the Apollo is on a mission to the Jilbert system. Please identify yourselves.”
“We never got to the Jilbert system,” I said, starting to feel odd arguing with a machine. “We got involved in the battle now going on here.”
“There is no battle under way here.”
“In orbit.” I pointed overhead.
The crowd murmured at that. I wondered if any of them would take the trouble to look at the sky after dark, when the exploding spacecraft could be seen as flashes of light among the stars.