The Fortress in Orion
Read The Fortress in Orion Online
Authors: Mike Resnick
A
LSO BY
M
IKE
R
ESNICK:
Starship: Mutiny
Starship: Pirate
Starship: Mercenary
Starship: Rebel
Starship: Flagship
The Buntline SpecialâA Weird West Tale
The Doctor and the KidâA Weird West Tale
The Doctor and the Rough RiderâA Weird West Tale
The Doctor and the DinosaursâA Weird West Tale
Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future
New Dreams for Old
Stalking the Unicorn
Stalking the Vampire
Stalking the Dragon
Published 2014 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
The Fortress in Orion
. Copyright © 2014 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously.
Cover illustration by Dave Seeley
Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht
Inquiries should be addressed to
Pyr
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Resnick, Michael D.
The Fortress in Orion / Mike Resnick.
pages cm. â (Dead Enders ; Book One)
ISBN 978-1-61614-990-1 (paperback) â ISBN 978-1-61614-991-8 (ebook)
1. Imaginary wars and battlesâFiction. 2. Human-alien encountersâFiction.
3. Space warfareâFiction. 4. Science fiction. 5. War stories. I. Title.
PS3568.E698F67 2014
813'.54âdc23
2014023891
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Appendix 1: The Origin of the Birthright Universe
Appendix 2: The Layout of the Birthright Universe
Appendix 3: Chronology of the Universe Created in
Birthright: The Book of Man
PROLOGUE
Everything hurt.
Pretorius lay on his back, trying to focus his eyes on the door some ten feet away from the foot of his bed. It took him almost two minutes of intense concentration for it to stop swiveling like a belly dancer.
He gingerly tried flexing his left hand and felt the fingers move. He tried the same thing with his right hand and felt nothing.
He ran his left hand over his torso, winced as it came in contact with medical dressings, and lay perfectly still until the pain subsided.
Finally he turned his head to the left and saw half a dozen tubes leading from his body. Some went to what he recognized as the standard life-support machines, but two of them were connected to translucent vats. There was
something
in each of themâa pair of dissimilar somethings, actuallyâbut he couldn't make out what they were.
A white-clad figureâhe couldn't focus enough to determine its genderâapproached him and began manipulating something on his left side.
“Damn, that smarts!” he muttered.
“Ah, you're awake,” said the figure in a feminine voice.
“I'd prefer to think that I'm having a nightmare,” he replied.
“You have a visitor, Colonel Pretorius, one who is very anxious to see you.”
Colonel Pretorius. Right, that's me. I'd forgotten.
Then:
I wonder what my first name is?
“Tell whoever it is to go away,” rasped Pretorius. “We are not entertaining visitors.”
The womanâhe could focus enough now to see that it was a female doctorâlaughed. “Same old Colonel Pretorius!”
He frowned. “I've been here before?”
“It'll come back to you.”
“In this lifetime?” he asked.
She chuckled again. “I'll let your visitor explain.”
She walked to the door; it opened. She gestured to someone on the far side of it and stepped aside as a burly man with a shock of white hair and a matching mustache entered the room.
“Thanks,” he said. “I'll take it from here.” She nodded and walked out the doorway, which snapped shut behind her. “Welcome back, Nathan.”
Son of a bitch! Nathan is me!
“I've been gone?”
“In every possible way.”
Pretorius managed to focus even better and saw that his visitor wore a general's uniform.
“How many possible ways would that be?”
The general smiled. “You went out on a missionâI'll give you all the details later, if you have trouble remembering themâand you accomplished it, as you always do.”
“I don't remember a damned thing,” said Pretorius.
“That's because you've only been awake a few minutes.”
“So where am I back from?”
The general smiled. “You're back from Benedaris IV in the Albion Cluster.” He paused. “You're also back from whatever the hell is on the Other Side.”
Pretorius frowned. “The other side of
what
?”
“Life. You died for a few minutes during surgery.”
Pretorius tried to shake his head and winced. “I don't remember a damned thing.”
“Too bad. There's plenty that would pay through the nose to know what it's like there.”
“On Benedaris IV?”
The general looked amused. “You have one more guess.”
Pretorius grimaced. “I don't want it.”
The general threw back his head and laughed. “That's my Nathan!”
Pretorius stared at him. “I seem to remember you. Kind of.”
“You ought to. We've been working together for a dozen years. I'm Wilber Cooper. Name ring a bell?”
Pretorius concentrated, then frowned. “You're the bastard who keeps sending me out on these missions.”
“See?” said Cooper with a grin. “You
do
remember.”
“What happened to me?”
“We're hoping you'll tell us when you're strong enough to be debriefed. But it was messy. See these two cases?” Cooper tapped the two translucent vats. “One of them is cloning you a spleen, and the other a pancreas. They should be ready for you, or you for them, in a week.” He paused. “Looks like we're also going to give you a prosthetic foot, to replace the artificial one you ruined. There's not a whole lot of the original Nathan Pretorius left.”
“How long have I been here?” asked Pretorius.
“A few weeks.”
Pretorius frowned. “
Weeks?
”
Cooper nodded. “You've been in a medically induced coma. They just let you wake up about an hour ago.”
“And I fulfilled my mission?”
“You always do.”
“What was it?”
“You led a team into a buried facility on Benedaris where the Bolio kept the weaponry they planned to use to disrupt the upcoming Spiral Arm Games. It was pretty sophisticated stuff. There's not a scanning station in the Democracy that can spot it. Ten of those bastards could have wiped out, oh, eighty or ninety thousand spectators before we killed them.”
“And I disabled the weapons?” asked Pretorius.
Cooper smiled. “That's one way of putting it. You blew up a third of the goddamned planet.” He paused. “They killed your men while you were escaping and came damned close to killing you. You were quite a mess when we found you.”
“I thought you said I
did
die.”
“In surgery, not in the field,” responded Cooper. “Though I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end.”
“So since I'm clearly damaged goods, I suppose I should ask about my pension and the best retirement communities.”
Cooper emitted a heartfelt belly laugh. “Forget it, Nathan! We're in the middle of a war!”
“
You're
in a war,” said Pretorius. “Me, I'm in a hospital.”
“For the fourth time,” said Cooper. “Or is it the fifth?”
“How the hell should I know?” demanded Pretorius. “I didn't even know my name ten minutes ago.”
“It'll come back to you. It always does.”
“I get shot up a lot, do I?”
“It's a dangerous business,” replied Cooper. “But you're the best covert agent we've got, and there's no way you're walking away from this.” The general paused, then added: “And once your brain and body are working again, you won't want to.”
Pretorius stared at him and had the uneasy feeling that he was right.
1
Pretorius was sitting in his room, staring out the window at the gardens just beyond, when the door opened and a tall orderly, not quite human but clearly humanoid, entered the room.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the orderly in a harsh, rasping voice. “You have a visitor.”
“I'll excuse you if it's anyone but that Cooper.”
“That's
General
Cooper, sir,” said the orderly.
Pretorius grimaced. “How did I know?”
“May I show him in, sir?”
“Absolutely not,” said Pretorius. “He's the last man I want to see.”
“This is a military rehab center,” said a familiar voice from beyond the room. “You let me in and make yourself scarce or I'll have you court-martialed.”
“He's lying,” said Pretorius. “He does that a lot.”
“Sir,” said the orderly, “may I present General Cooper.”
Cooper strode into the room and turned to the alien orderly. “Scram, son,” he said.
“Good-natured as ever,” noted Pretorius.
“Nathan, my boy!” said Cooper expansively. “How are you?”
“I was fine until thirty seconds ago, and I haven't been a boy in twenty years.”
“Do I detect some veiled hostility here?” said Cooper with an amused smile.
“Absolutely, except for the veil,” replied Pretorius. “Leave me alone.”
“The medics tell me you're being released tomorrow,” continued Cooper. “It's time to talk business.”
“It's time to talk recuperation,” said Pretorius. “Leave me alone.”
“Can't do that, Nathan my boy! There's still a war on.”
“I'm not your boy, and there'll still be a war on whether I listen to you or not.” He glared at Cooper. “I'd prefer not.”
“That's exactly what you said the last two times,” noted Cooper cheerfully.
“You mean the last two times I was almost killed carrying out your hair-brained schemes?”
“Need I remind you they were
your
schemes?”