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Ben Bova

Vengeance of Orion

To the kindly, courteous, cheerful, and always-helpful staff of the West

Hartford Library, with my thanks.

CON TENTS

PART ONE

continued

PART TWO

PART THREE

Chapter 34

Prologue

Chapter 35

Chapter 13

Chapter 36

Chapter 1

Chapter 14

Chapter 25

Chapter 37

Chapter 2

Chapter 15

Chapter 26

Chapter 38

Chapter 3

Chapter 16

Chapter 27

Chapter 39

Chapter 4

Chapter 17

Chapter 28

Chapter 40

Chapter 5

Chapter 18

Chapter 29

Chapter 41

Chapter 6

Chapter 19

Chapter 30

Chapter 42

Chapter 7

Chapter 20

Chapter 31

Chapter 43

Chapter 8

Chapter 21

Chapter 32

Chapter 44

Chapter 9

Chapter 22

Chapter 33

Chapter 45

Chapter 10

Chapter 23

Chapter 46

Chapter 11

Chapter 24

Chapter 12

Epilogue

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Afterward

The great invasions which destroyed late Bronze Age civilization came from two directions. From the

northwest a variety of tribes, called by the Egyptians the "sea peoples," began raiding the eastern coasts

of the Mediterranean... [by] 1200 B.C. the Hittite empire was destroyed.... While these invasions from

the northwest swept over Greece, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean coasts, other hordes of invaders

came from the southeast, from the fringes of the Arabian desert... The movement began early: the

Israelites were already in Palestine before 1220 B.C

— The Columbia History of the World, 1972

Prologue

I am not superhuman. I do have abilities that are far beyond those of any normal man's, but I am just as

human and mortal as anyone of Earth.

Yet I am a solitary man. My life has been spent alone, my mind clouded with strange dreams and, when

I am awake, half memories of other lives, other existences that are so fantastic that they can only be the

compensations of a lonely, withdrawn subconscious mind.

As I did almost every day, I took my lunch hour late in the afternoon and made my way from my office

to the same small restaurant in which I always ate. Alone. I sat at my usual table, toying with my food and

thinking about how much of my life is spent in solitude.

I happened to look up toward the front entrance of the restaurant when she came in—stunningly

beautiful, tall and graceful, hair the color of midnight and lustrous gray eyes that held all of eternity in

them.

"Anya," I breathed to myself, even though I had no idea who she was. Yet something within me leaped

with joy, as if I had known her from ages ago.

She seemed to know me as well. Smiling, she made her way directly to my table. I got up from my chair,

feeling elated and confused at the same time.

"Orion." She extended her hand.

I took it in mine and bent to kiss it. Then I held a chair for her to sit. The waiter came over and she

asked for a glass of red wine. It trundled off to the bar.

"I feel as if I've known you all my life," I said to her.

"For many lifetimes," she said, her voice soft and melodious as a warm summer breeze. "Don't you

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remember?"

I closed my eyes in concentration and a swirl of memories rushed in on me so rapidly that it took my

breath away. I saw a great shining globe of golden light and the dark brooding figure of a fiercely

malevolent man, a forest of giant trees and a barren windswept desert and a world of unending ice and

snow. And her, this woman, clad in silver armor that gleamed against the dark-ness of infinity.

"I... remember... death," I heard myself stammer. "The whole world, the entire universe... all of

space-time collapsed in on itself."

She nodded gravely. "And rebounded in a new cycle of expansion. That was something that neither

Ormazd nor Ahriman foresaw. The continuum does not end; it begins anew."

"Ormazd," I muttered. "Ahriman." The names touched a chord in my mind. I felt anger welling up inside

me, anger tinged with fear and resentment. But I could not recall who they were and why they stirred

such strong emotions within me.

"They are still out there," she said, "still grappling with each other. But they know, thanks to you, Orion,

that the continuum cannot be destroyed so easily. It perseveres."

"Those other lives I remember—you were in them."

"Yes, as I will be in this one."

"I loved you, then."

Her smile lit the world. "Do you love me now?"

"Yes." And I knew it was so. I meant it with every atom of my being.

"And I love you, too, Orion. I always have and I always will. Through death and infinity, my darling, I

will always love you."

"But I'm leaving soon."

"I know."

Past her shoulder I could see through the restaurant's window the gaudy crescent of Saturn hanging low

on the horizon, the thin line of its rings slicing through its bulging middle. Closer to the horizon the sky of

Titan was its usual smoggy orange overcast.

The starship was parked in orbit up there, waiting for us to finish our final preparations and board it.

"We'll be gone for twenty years," I said.

"To the Sirius system. I know."

"It's a long voyage."

"Not as long as some we've already made, Orion," she said, "or others we will make someday."

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"What do you mean?"

"I'll explain it during the voyage." She smiled again. "We'll have plenty of time to remember everything

then."

My heart leaped in my chest. "You're going too?"

"Of course." She laughed. "We've endured the collapse and rebirth of the universe, Orion. We have

shared many lives and many deaths. I'm not going to be separated from you now."

"But I haven't seen you at any of the crew briefings. You're not on the list..."

"I am now. We will journey out to the stars together, my beloved. We have a long and full lifetime ahead

of us. And perhaps even more than that."

I leaned across the table and kissed her lips. My loneliness was ended, at last. I could face anything in

the world now. I was ready to challenge the universe.

BOOK I: TROY

Chapter 1

THE slash of a whip across my bare back brought me to full awareness. "Pull, you big ox! Stop your

daydreaming or you'll think Zeus's thunderbolts are landing on your shoulders!"

I was sitting on a rough wooden bench along the gunwale of a long, wallowing boat, a heavy oar in my

hands. No, not an oar. A paddle. We were rowing hard, under a hot high sun. I could see the sweat

streaming down the emaciated ribs and spine of the man in front of me. There were welts across his

nut-brown skin.

"Pull!" the man with the whip roared. "Stay with the beat."

I wore nothing but a stained leather loincloth. Sweat stung my eyes. My back and arms ached. My

hands were callused and dirty.

The boat was like a Hawaiian war canoe. The prow rose high into a grotesquely carved figurehead;

some fierce demonic spirit, I guessed, to protect the boat and its crew. I glanced swiftly around as I dug

my paddle into the heaving dark sea and counted forty rowers. Amidships there were bales of goods,

tethered sheep and pigs that squealed with every roll of the deck.

The sun blazed overhead. The wind was fitful and light. The boat's only sail was furled against its mast. I

could smell the stench of the animals' droppings. Toward the stern a brawny bald man was beating a

single large mallet on a well-worn drum, as steady as a metronome. We drove our paddles into the water

in time with his beat—or took a sting from the rowing master's whip.

Other men were gathered down by the stern, standing, shading their eyes with one hand and pointing

with the other as they spoke with one another. They wore clean knee-length linen tunics and cloaks of

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red or blue that went down to midcalf. Small daggers at their belts, more for ornamentation than combat,

I judged. Silver inlaid hilts. Gold clasps on their cloaks. They were young men, lean, their beards light.

But their faces were grave, not jaunty. They were looking toward something that sobered their youthful

spirits. I followed their gaze and saw a headland not far off, a low treeless rocky rise at the end of a

sandy stretch of beach. Obviously our destination was beyond that promontory.

Where was I? How did I get here? Frantically I ransacked my mind. The last firm memory I could find

was of a beautiful, tall, gray-eyed woman who loved me and whom I loved. We were... a shudder of

blackest grief surged through me. She was dead.

My mind went spinning, as if a whirlpool had opened in the dark sea and dragged me down into it.

Dead. Yes. There was a ship, a very different ship. One that traveled not through the water but through

the vast emptiness between stars. I had been on that ship with her. And it exploded. She died. She was

killed. We were both killed.

Yet I lived, sweaty, dirty, my back stinging with welts, on this strangely primitive oversized canoe

heading for an unknown land under a brazen cloudless sky.

Who am I? With a sudden shock of fright I realized that I could remember nothing about myself except

my name. I am Orion, I told myself. But more than that I could not recall. My memory was a blank, as if

it had been wiped clean, like a classroom chalkboard being prepared for a new lesson.

I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to think about that woman I had loved and that fantastic

star-leaping ship. I could not even remember her name. I saw flames, heard screams. I held her in my

arms as the heat blistered our skins and made the metal walls around us glow hell-red.

"He's beaten us, Orion," she said to me. "We'll die together. That's the only consolation we will have, my

love."

I remembered pain. Not merely the agony of flesh searing and splitting open, steaming and cooking even

as our eyes were burned away, but the torture of being torn apart forever from the one woman in all the

universes whom I loved.

The whip cracked against my bare back again.

"Harder! Pull harder, you whoreson, or by the gods I'll sacrifice you instead of a bullock once we make

landfall!"

He leaned over me, his scarred face red with anger, and slashed at me again with the whip. The pain of

the lash was nothing. I closed it off without another thought. I always could control my body completely.

Had I wanted to, I could have snapped this hefty paddle in two and driven the ragged end of it through

the whipmaster's thick skull. But what was the sting of his whip compared to the agony of death, the

hopelessness of loss?

We rowed around the rocky headland and saw a calm sheltered inlet. Spread along the curving beach

were dozens of ships like our own, pulled far up on the sand. Huts and tents huddled among their black

hulls like shreds of paper littering a city street after a parade. Thin gray smoke issued from cook fires

here and there. A pall of thicker, blacker smoke billowed off in the distance.

A mile or so inland, up on a bluff that commanded the beach, stood a city or citadel of some sort. High

stone walls with square towers rising above the battlements. Far in the distance, dark wooded hills rose

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