“No, you’re not,” he said tightly. “The capsule’s going to the med labs, where it will be examined and tested.”
“But—”
“You and your crew are going to an interrogation center. We checked your story. The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system, more than seven hundred light-years from here. Either you’re lying or you’re a band of traitors. Either way, we’ll get the truth out of you.”
I slid the pistol from my holster and nudged it under his chin.
Perry’s eyes went wide. “Are you crazy?”
“Call it battle fatigue,” I said. “Either we go with the capsule or your brains get splattered on the overhead.”
The other police officers in the car gripped their weapons. So did my crew. The driver was the only one without a gun in his hands; he clung to the control wheel, gulped and stared straight ahead.
“You’ll kill all of us!” Perry snapped.
“That includes you.”
He huffed, then said to the driver, “Follow the medic van.”
We turned and went after the white aircar.
“They’ll hang you by the balls for this, Orion,” Perry said. “And I’ll be there to cheer them on.”
“After the capsule’s properly taken care of,” I told him, “then we can see whose balls get stretched.”
The medical center was a trap.
We landed in the marked pad in the middle of four towering buildings, all three aircars touching down virtually at the same instant. As we climbed out of the cars, four full squads of Tsihn soldiery stepped out of the doors on all four sides of us, guns leveled.
“Lizards!” I heard Frede growl.
“You will drop your weapons, humans,” said the Tsihn leader, a huge ocher-colored reptilian whose chest and arms were covered with insignia and decorations.
For a long silent moment we stood there confronting each other.
“I am Colonel Hrass-shleessa,” the big reptilian said. “I am duly authorized to command you. Put your weapons on the ground or we will fire.”
I glanced sideways at Captain Perry. He did not relish the idea of being caught in a firefight between us and the Tsihn.
We were hopelessly outnumbered. “They’ll kill us all,” Jerron grumbled. “Damned lizards.”
“Put your guns down,” I commanded my crew. “We will obey the colonel’s order.” I had no choice but to be an obedient soldier.
They marched us into another aircar while a medical team guided Anya’s capsule, floating on its flight packs, into one of the buildings. This aircar was army brown, and built more like a truck. We were bundled into the back, seated on the two benches running along its sides. I caught a glimpse of Captain Perry standing next to his own aircar as they slammed the hatch shut in my face. He was grinning at me, a malicious grin of triumph.
We flew out of the city, into the mountains to its west, for more than an hour. With nothing else to do, most of my crew flaked out and drowsed. I sat on the hard bucket seat and thought of the crew members who weren’t with us anymore: bloodied Emon, Dyer with her legs blown away, so many others. Don’t make friends, I told myself. A combat soldier shouldn’t make any personal attachments.
We were flown to an army detention center out in the cold, gray mountains. Human prisoners and Tsihn guards. I bristled at the reptilians; every instinct in me told me they were the enemies of humankind. And here in this detention center that certainly seemed so.
They separated me from Frede and the rest of the crew, showed me to a bare little windowless cell. Nothing but a cot, sink and toilet. And a lightbulb set into the concrete ceiling, too high for me to reach.
I was not in the cell for long, however. A pair of Tsihn guards unlocked my door and escorted me to a room where a junior Tsihn officer—its scales were pale lemon and bore hardly any decorations at all—sat on a high stool that was the only piece of furniture visible.
“You will sit,” it said to me.
I lowered myself to the concrete floor. It felt cold, clammy. My two guards remained standing by the door.
Satisfied that he could loom over me, the Tsihn officer leaned toward me and asked, “Who are you and where are you from?”
“My name is Orion. I was captain of the Apollo.”
It bared its teeth. “The Apollo was sent to the Jilbert system.”
“We never got there. We went to Prime, instead, and brought one of the Hegemony’s topmost leaders here to discuss peace terms with the Commonwealth’s leadership.”
It snorted. I could see the humid air huffing from its nostrils. “Orion, you say your name is?”
“Yes.”
“There is no record of you in the Commonwealth military files.”
That surprised me only slightly. “Check with Brigadier Uxley at sector station six,” I said. “He knows me. Check with my crew; we’ve done a lot of fighting together. Lunga, Bititu, the battle going on now in orbit.”
“That battle is finished,” it said grandly. “The Skorpis fleet has been driven off.”
“Good.”
Those red slitted eyes stared at me. “You see, to me all you humans look alike. How can we tell if you are truly a Commonwealth soldier or a Hegemony spy? The same applies to your crew, as well.”
I realized that my true story would sound ludicrously fraudulent to it. “You have brainwave scanners, don’t you? You can easily see if I’m telling the truth.”
“Ah, the truth,” breathed my reptilian interrogator, almost like a human professor of philosophy. “What is the truth, Orion? You could tell me a tale that you believe to be true, and yet it might simply be a set of memories implanted in your mind by Hegemony intelligence operatives.”
I shrugged. “Then what’s the point of this questioning?”
It cocked its lizard’s head to one side. “Why, to hear what you have to say. To determine if there is any valuable information in your story. That’s the least we can do before we execute you and your crew.”
Chapter 31
So I told my Tsihn interrogator my whole story, even the truth about Aten and the other Creators. It listened with great interest, I thought, although it was impossible to read any expression on its reptilian face. But it was polite and even seemed curious, interrupting me with questions time and again.
All through my long narration, though, a part of my mind kept repeating to me that they were going to kill me. Kill Frede and Jerron and the rest of my crew. Why? Why execute loyal soldiers who had fought so hard for them?
It was my fault. I had disobeyed orders and taken them to Prime. As far as the Commonwealth was concerned, I was a traitor, and very likely a spy from the Hegemony. My crew was going to die because of me.
But then I began to think of the other factors. Somewhere in this mess was Aten, the Golden One, trying to manipulate the humans, their allies, their enemies, even the other Creators. He would kill Anya now that he had her in his possession. And I had delivered her to him.
“He’ll kill you, too,” I told my interrogator.
The young Tsihn blinked its yellow eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
“Aten doesn’t want his creatures to know that he is manipulating them. He doesn’t want the Commonwealth to know that this war is being fought because of an argument among the Creators.”
The Tsihn officer was silent for a long moment. Then it said, “Either you are a very creative liar, Orion, or an absolute psychotic. Your invention of the Creators has some aspect of poetry to it, I must admit, but you carry it too far.”
“He’ll kill you to keep my story from leaking out,” I said.
“I am not one of his creatures—if he exists at all.”