Ben Bova: Orion Among the Stars

And my mind filled with new knowledge. I saw history unreeling like a speeded-up film. Saw the first struggling efforts of humans to reach into space. Saw the first of them to stand on the Moon, and then the long hiatus before they returned. Saw the expansion through the solar system: scientists exploring Mars, industrialists building factories in space, miners and political refugees and adventurers spreading through the asteroid belt and the moons of the giant planets.

And all the while, scientists searched for signs of intelligent life among the stars. Fossils were found on Mars, primitive plant life beneath the ice shields of Europa. But for a century and more our radio-telescope scans of the stars found nothing; our calls into the vastness of interstellar space went unanswered.

Within two centuries of those first faltering footsteps on the Moon, humankind achieved the stars. Boiling outward from the confines of the solar system, brash and eager with the discovery of energies that propelled ships faster than light, the human race finally met its equals among the stars, other species fully as intelligent as we. They were thinly scattered through the vastness of the galaxy, but they were there: intelligent life, some of it roughly humanoid in form, other species quite different. But there were civilizations for us to meet, to exchange thoughts with, alien creatures as mature and as intelligent as we.

And as violent. Inevitably, there was war, a long, bitter, brutal struggle that had already killed billions and wiped whole planets clean of life.

My heart sank. Millions of years of human evolution, tens of thousands of years to build a civilization that can span the stars, and the result is war. Instead of learning and understanding one another, the so-called intelligent species of the galaxy slaughter one another.

“Why do you think I built your gift for violence into your kind, Orion?” the Golden One asked me. “There are only two kinds of intelligent creatures in the galaxy: those who can fight, and those who are extinct.”

These reptilians were our allies. They called themselves the Tsihn, and they fought on our side against our mutual enemies in the cold, dark vastness of interstellar space. Allies or not, though, they still looked too much like Set and his race for me to feel comfortable.

Aten sensed my unease. “Orion, there are many, many different races in the universe, but only a few basic body plans. Reptiles and mammals share common ancestry; when they evolve into intelligent races they tend to stand erect, walk on their hind legs, and have their brains and major sensory organs grouped in their heads. The resemblance between these reptilians and Set’s creatures is strictly an evolutionary footnote, nothing more.”

“I would think the universe would be more varied than this,” I said.

He chuckled condescendingly. “Your mind improves, Orion. Of course there are many other forms of intelligent life, based on body plans that look nothing at all like ours. But they are so alien that we have practically no interaction with them. Methane breathers. Sea-bottom dwellers. Interstellar spores. What they need we do not want; what we want they have no need for. We do not trade with them, we do not mix with them—and we do not make war with them. It would be pointless.”

“So who are we making war on?” I asked.

“You will see, soon enough,” he replied. “The planet we are approaching is crucial to this phase of the war. You and your assault team must seize a landing site, set up a transceiver station and hold it against all enemy counterattacks.”

“With only a hundred?”

“More cannot be spared. Not now.”

I wanted to laugh in his face, but I could not. A transceiver station down on the surface would be critical to the task of invading the planet and driving off the enemy. Equipment and supplies could be beamed from the fleet to the surface. People, of course, could not be. Not unless they were willing to die. It took an extraordinary amount of heroism—or desperation—to willingly enter a matter-transmission dock. The device disassembles you and transmits its scan of your body to the receiver. What comes out of the receiver is a copy of you, exact down even to your memories. But you have been killed, your atoms stored in the device for the next user. Your personality has been extinguished, you have ceased to exist. Perhaps the atoms that once made up your body will be used to reconstruct someone else. Or a drum of lubrication oil. Or a case of ammunition.

“A hundred is not enough to hold a transceiver site against enemy attack,” I said.

Scowling, Aten told me, “You’ll have support from the fleet. Reinforcements will be sent as soon as possible. The planet is lightly held by the enemy. If you move swiftly enough, you should be able to get the transceiver working before they can attack you in force.”

“And if I fail?”

“Then you will die, Orion. And your hundred with you. And this time I will not revive you. We are involved now in a crucial aspect of the ultimate crisis, Orion, the nexus that determines the course of the continuum. Everything else you have done pales to insignificance. Set up that transceiver and hold it until the reinforcements arrive. Hold or die.”

I got the command briefing as I assembled my troop and moved them into the landing vehicles. A flood of data and imagery flowed directly into my brain; the work of the Golden One, I knew. He was telling me telepathically what I needed to know to serve his purposes. And nothing more.

The planet’s name was Lunga. The area where we were to land was jungle, low, swampy ground, ideal for defenders’ ambushes and difficult for support from orbit. There were extensive oceans, rugged mountain ranges. No intrinsic intelligent life-forms: the highest order of living creatures was tree-dwelling nocturnal animals about the size of lemurs.

The enemy were humanoid in form, but much larger in build than any of us. Two and a half meters tall, they averaged, and very solidly built. They were not professional soldiers so much as a whole race of nomadic warriors. They called themselves the Skorpis, which in their language meant “Bred for Battle.” Where they came from: unknown. Why they had allied themselves to our enemies: also unknown. They were starting to build a base on Lunga. Why, I was not told. What strategic value the planet had was also not in my briefing. My job, as Aten had told me, was to set up the transceiver and hold it. Or die.

We boarded the landers in squads, twenty-five young men and women per squad, each of them in green camouflage armor and helmets, bristling with weapons. Not much talk as they filed into the landers’ narrow, cramped compartments. Most of the troopers looked grim, lips pressed together, doing what they were told by the numbers and trying not to let their fears show in their faces.

There were a few wisecracks, of course. Some of the kids covered up their jumpiness with wretched attempts at humor. And the usual gripes.

“How come we have to be the ones to go in? Why can’t they send some other team? Why’s it always have to be us?”

“ ’Cause we’re all heroes,” came a reply.

“Yeah. We’ll all get medals for heroism,” someone else said, sourly.

“What’s the matter, soldier, don’t you like the army?”

“Maybe he’s not happy in his profession.”

“Well, you know what they say: You’ve gotta be born to it. ”

At that they all laughed, even the one who complained. Their laughter seemed harshly bitter to me.

“Can it, you mutts,” growled their sergeant. “Find your places and strap in. This isn’t a joyride.”

Kids. From my physical condition I was not much older than they, but I knew I had led many lives, died and been revived time and again. The Skorpis were bred for battle, were they? I had been created for battle. Aten built me to be a warrior, a hunter, a killer.