I took her message in my command chair on the bridge, wearing my best ship’s uniform.
“There is ugly talk,” said the admiral, her teeth showing in a barely suppressed snarl, “that you return to the Commonwealth to discuss surrender of the Hegemony.”
“This ship carries one of your leaders in cryosleep,” I answered. “We are transporting her to Loris, the capital of the Commonwealth, at her command.”
“To surrender?”
A diplomat would have found evasive words. A politician would have lied. I was simply a warrior. “To discuss an armistice, a truce, an end to the war,” I said.
“On Commonwealth terms,” the Skorpis admiral rumbled, like a lioness growling.
“On the best terms that can be obtained.”
“Surrender.”
“Not surrender,” I insisted. “An armistice. Peace.”
“Surrender,” she repeated. And I realized that she meant I should surrender my ship to her.
“This vessel is on a diplomatic mission. We are carrying one of the Hegemony’s highest leaders. You cannot order us—”
“Stop accelerating and prepare to be boarded by my warriors,” the Skorpis admiral insisted. “Otherwise we will destroy you, your ship, and the traitoress who wants to surrender.”
I knew that every moment I could keep her talking was a moment closer to the relative safety of superlight.
“On what authority do you make such an unreasonable demand?” I asked, as indignantly as I could.
Her image in my display screen disappeared, instantly replaced by a view of a dozen Skorpis battle cruisers powering toward us.
The Apollo rocked wildly.
“They’ve opened fire on us!” Emon yelled. He was practically at my elbow; his shout was more from sudden excitement than fear. At least, I hoped so.
“Evasive maneuvers,” I said.
You can’t evade laser beams, even at relativistic speed. With a dozen battle cruisers within range of us, they blazed away, catching us in a cone of fire that sizzled our defensive screen and sent all the meters on the bridge deep into the red.
It was a race to see whether they could overload our screen and penetrate it before we achieved superlight and winked out of their sector of space-time.
“Cancel the evasive maneuvers,” I said. “All available power to the main engines.”
We were still shaking and rattling from the blasts of laser bolts drenching our screen. And in the static-streaked displays I could see that squadron of battle cruisers coming up on us, far faster than we were. I turned to Frede, strapped into the seat beside me.
She knew what I was going to ask before I asked it. “Computer projects complete screen collapse fourteen seconds before we achieve superlight.”
“That’s enough time—”
“For them to vaporize us, yes,” Frede finished for me.
There had to be something we could do.
“Transfer power from the forward section of the screen to the rear. That’s where we’re being hit.”
“But if those battle cruisers maneuver to come in on our forward section…” She did not have to complete the sentence. One shot on an unscreened section of the ship would cut us in two like a hot knife going through butter.
“Do it!” I snapped.
Frede’s fingers flicked across her keyboard. “Computer projects we’ll be in superlight twenty seconds before the screen overloads,” she said. Then added, “If nobody hits us forward.”
We all held our breaths. The ship rocked and shivered under the pounding of the orbital stations’ guns. The battle cruisers were gaining on us steadily. Two of them spurted ahead, trying to get in front of us and attack us from that quarter.
And then we flashed into superlight. All the display screens went blank and our shaking, shuddering ordeal was over.
“We made it!” whooped Jerron, from his engineer’s console.
“So far,” I said.
Frede turned to me. “They know we’re heading for Loris. They can plant squadrons in all the likely places where we’d come out of superlight for navigational fixes. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“Only if we follow the geodesic to Loris,” I said. ” Nowis the time for evasive maneuvers.”
It was a gamble. We had to reach Loris before the Commonwealth started using the star-killers, but we could not approach Loris on the shortest route because Skorpis battle squadrons would be lying in wait along that way. So we had to take a more roundabout route, yet not such a distorted one that our arrival at Loris would be delayed too long.
How long was too long? I had no way of knowing.
Watches changed on the bridge, time flowed by, but I remained in my command chair, unwilling to leave. I did not sleep, I ate only what the crew members brought to me from time to time. I reached out mentally to Anya’s frozen body in the cryosleeper deep in our ship’s hold. She was alive, her mind slowly flickering in the cryogenic cold.
I thought about attempting to contact Aten, but decided that the dangers there outweighed the advantages. He would read my thoughts the instant I reached him and know that although Anya and the other Creators were ready to bow to his will, I was out to murder him.
Is there some way I can shield my thoughts from him? I asked Anya for her help, but her mind was so slowed by her frozen state that I doubted she could hear me.
We remained in superlight velocity as long as we dared, then slowed to relativistic for a quick navigational fix. The course Frede had plotted for us was designed to take us a considerable distance from the direct geodesic route to Loris. But the closer we got to the Commonwealth planet, the more we would have to adhere to a course that the Skorpis could intercept.
I knew what I would do if I were the Skorpis admiral. I would send a major fleet as close to Loris as I dared, keep it in superlight except for scout ships that hop down to relativistic speed, take a look around, and then power back into superlight once more. As soon as one of the scouts spotted us approaching Loris it could alert the main fleet with a gravitational pulse that could be detected in superlight. Then the entire fleet could go relativistic and catch us as we attempted to reach the planet.
They would have to face the massive defenses of the entire Giotto system, I realized. But, as I played the possible scenarios on the ship’s tactical computer, it seemed to me that the Skorpis might not only catch us like a minnow in a net, they might be able to surprise the Commonwealth defenses and overwhelm them. It was a slim chance, but knowing the Skorpis, I thought it highly likely that they would grasp at it.
I almost laughed aloud when I realized what was shaping up. Our “diplomatic” mission was going to lead to a sneak attack on the Commonwealth capital. Our effort to surrender and end the war was going to trigger the bloodiest battle of them all.
And there was nothing I could do to avert it.
Chapter 26
Part of me felt almost exultant. A tremendous battle loomed ahead of us, and I was created for battle. The old excitement simmered within, making my innards tremble with anticipation.
Yet another part of me was filled with revulsion. Not fear, but loathing. How many of my command had already died? And for what? How many had I killed, over the eons? I remembered assassinating Ogotai, the High Khan of the Mongols, my friend, my hunting companion. I remembered the slaughter once we had pierced the walls of Troy. And Jericho. I remembered Philip’s accusing stare as the blood filled his mouth and gushed from the slash in his belly.
When will there be an end to blood? The Golden One boasted that he created the human race to fight for him. Could we not overcome the aggression he had built into us? Could we not learn to live in peace?