She watched him, her eyes like scalpels. He felt a prickle of sweat on his brow. “I suppose that’s for the best,” he said. He was screaming inside.
“Yes, I suppose so. I’m certainly glad I didn’t have to take measures against you. What happened to Lord Riomini’s guards should be a lesson to you, too.” Michella leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, humming to herself. “Before you hire a new assistant, I will have my chief of staff make suggestions.”
Ishop sat frozen in panic. For the first time in years, he felt utterly helpless. And alone.
Michella settled into her own seat. “We’ll worry about that after the Commodore launches his fleet to Tehila. It’ll be glorious.”
20
For his entire adult life, Bolton Crais had been an officer in the Army of the Constellation, and by virtue of his noble birth he had always felt imbued with a sense of honor, a duty to be moral and trustworthy. Unfortunately, not all nobles held themselves to such a high standard.
After the initial defeat of General Adolphus, the Army of the Constellation had been nothing more than a place for gala military parades and routine patrols. Promotions were purchased with bribes or awarded on the basis of bloodlines. As a mere logistics officer, Bolton had never expected to shoulder the onerous responsibility of making life-or-death combat decisions.
Now, in the Hellhole prisoner-of-war camp, Bolton felt duty-bound to protect his fellow soldiers, including Redcom Escobar Hallholme. On several occasions during their abortive retaliatory mission, Bolton had seen the Redcom make unwise decisions. He’d given his advice, but if the Redcom chose to ignore the suggestions, he had to accept the will of his commanding officer.
For two days, Bolton had tried to convince the Redcom and the two other junior officers not to go through with their impulsive escape scheme, insisting that they had insufficient information to plan properly, no sense of the local geography or natural hazards, no equipment or weapons. But they would not be convinced, so he was forced to accept the idea. Since Redcom Hallholme intended to go, his logistics officer volunteered to do whatever he could to help. By observation and careful accounting, Bolton had quietly saved the man before.
Vingh and Yimidi were excited as they implemented their plan with Redcom Hallholme, although Bolton doubted they could ever make their way across the unforgiving landscape to distant Michella Town, then seize a ship at the spaceport, and make their way via a roundabout stringline path back to Sonjeera. Bolton did not want to destroy their hope; instead, he needed to do everything possible to make the attempt succeed.
He only wished he could see Keana one more time. Maybe he could even talk her into helping him.
After breaking out of the camp and slipping past the sparse guards—the first obstacle they had to overcome—the four escapees planned to head overland, seeking a patch of wilderness where they hoped no one would follow. The other POWs had agreed to hide the absence of the escapees for as long as possible to give them a chance. Assuming that Hellhole itself provided a sufficient deterrent against foolish escape attempts, the General’s guards did not take roll call but simply let the prisoners live in the camp until such time as they could either be returned home or assimilated into the Hellhole colony.
Escobar assumed they could make good time and be far from the camp before their absence was noted. The escapees would journey overland, keeping away from any established travel paths. Along the way, they might find a mining settlement or some other industrial oasis. As a man who liked to plan down to the last detail, Bolton felt uneasy about such a seat-of-the-pants scheme, especially on a hostile world, but Escobar’s insistence replaced all other answers.
As they pooled their plans and assessed their skills, BluCap Agok Yimidi reminded everyone that he was an experienced technology officer. Previously, he had worked with Bolton to install the self-destruct virus in the captured retaliation fleet, which had destroyed many impounded Constellation vessels rather than let them fall into enemy hands. Yimidi had a special interest in stealth technology, and he managed to improvise some makeshift camouflage generators from available materials in the camp. Although Bolton was skeptical, Yimidi insisted that he could cobble together a crude stealth shield that would temporarily veil a Trakmaster, one of the colony’s common overland vehicles. That would hide them from most searches unless trackers stumbled right on top of the stolen vehicle. Escobar convinced them that they had to take the chance.
It had been well past midnight when the four got under way. Slipping through the perimeter fencing proved relatively easy, after other prisoners kept the patrolling guards busy with a diversion. As the group sneaked off into the night, Escobar mocked the gullibility of the General’s security; Bolton worried that the laxness signaled that the guards believed escaping into the wilderness was so obviously dangerous as to be completely absurd. He had a bad feeling about this venture.
The four men kept low to the ground, carrying supplies toward a parking compound where Trakmaster vehicles for Slickwater Springs were kept. The vehicles operated on reactive fuel pellets, and each one was already loaded with a month’s supply, certainly enough to get them to Michella Town. Slipping through the shadows and selecting a vehicle at random, the four men loaded the stolen supplies, climbed aboard, and waited while Yimidi set up his makeshift camouflage system.
“It’s not perfect, but the best I can do,” Yimidi whispered to Bolton, as he connected a compact apparatus to the cab ceiling of the Trakmaster. “This should keep us from being detected by long-range scans.”
“It might give us the advantage we need,” Bolton said. He swung into the driver’s seat, and Escobar climbed in beside him, activating the navigation system. Yimidi and Vingh scrambled into the back compartment. A devout man, Lt. Seyn Vingh took a few minutes to pray each day but joked that as a military officer in wartime, he was often forced to do it with one eye open. As Bolton started up the humming engine, he heard Vingh murmuring one of his prayers. Bolton prayed, too, that they could get far enough away from the camp before anyone came to investigate. He suspected someone would notice the missing Trakmaster sooner than any missing prisoners.
The heavy vehicle rolled forward slowly, crossed the boundary of the parking compound, and headed onto a paved road that connected the camp with Slickwater Springs. But Bolton swung off the well-traveled path and rolled out onto the open landscape, away from customary traffic patterns.
Inside the cab, Escobar called up options on the nav-screen and gave Bolton a heading, taking them farther from the road and the low lights of the camp and the much larger Slickwater Springs compound. Though the burly vehicle was designed for rugged terrain, the four passengers were jostled about as the Trakmaster crawled up a grade.
Ahead, through the light-enhancing night-goggles he’d found in the driver’s compartment—since he didn’t dare use bright running lights—Bolton studied the bleak and sterile landscape. The terrain was formed of ash and mud that piled up after the asteroid strike, and eroded into strange shapes by centuries of wind and rain.
The Trakmaster’s database had a library of previously cataloged terrain images, which helped them chart their route. According to the data on the screen, Michella Town’s spaceport was a long, hard distance away.
The vehicle rolled over knobby shrubs and wound down into a wide arroyo, where they would be hidden. The channel of the wash led them toward a sheer wall of exposed rock, but Escobar insisted that the nav-system showed a way through.
As Bolton drove into the darkness, his companions began to believe that they had gotten away after all. Bolton was sure, however, that the difficult part was just beginning.
Much of the terrain looked confusingly similar, but Escobar guided him into a side channel that widened and sent them toward the imposing escarpment. Before long, they reached the base of the wall of rock, with a cliff towering high overhead. Escobar studied the nav-system, then pointed to the right. “We can get through over there.”
With his
goggles, Bolton discerned a dark vertical line in the cliff, and headed toward it. The Trakmaster bumped over a pile of boulders and down the other side, reaching a half-hidden vertical defile.
“Is it safe to go through?” Vingh asked from the back compartment, though he could see little in the darkened vehicle.
By now, they had gone many kilometers from the fenced camp, and Bolton risked turning on the Trakmaster’s powerful headlights for the first time. Spears of light shone into the opening, revealing boulders on the ground and high, rough rock walls on either side. But the narrow slot looked passable.
“We have to go this way,” Escobar insisted.
Bolton took a deep breath and rolled forward, hoping that the walls didn’t close in farther down the defile. In the back, Vingh and Yimidi slid open their side windows so they could look up at the sheer rock faces on either side.
Yimidi shone a spotlight up the cliff on his side. “Is that algae growing on the rock? Patches of yellow and black stuff, twitching and flowing. Look at it move! I think it’s keeping pace with us.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Bolton said.
“Increase our speed,” Escobar said. “Don’t stop until we’re out of here.”
“Close the windows,” Bolton said. “Remember where we are.”
The windows snicked shut, and the Trakmaster rumbled on while the escapees sat together in silence, the air thick with their shared trepidation. Yimidi shone a handlight through the window but could no longer see the flowing algae.
The heavy vehicle slid and shifted sideways as the tracks struggled to gain traction on uneven surfaces. Looking at the headlights in front of them, Bolton was astonished to see that the vehicle was rolling over a thick carpet of moving algae that gathered around them. Yimidi yelped, said that green ooze was seeping through the floorboard. He stomped on the algae, forcing it to retreat as if it could feel pain. “We need more speed!”
More of the strange growth seeped through the rear of the vehicle. Vingh and Escobar struggled to squash the algae wherever it oozed inside. Trying to accelerate, Bolton spotted a tongue of something slick and yellow crawl over the top of one of his boots in the cab; he shook it loose and stomped down with his free foot. The Trakmaster rocked and shook as he drove it through the defile, dodging the largest rocks. The boulders around them were all yellow and black with the slithering vegetation.
Algae began to cover the side windows, and some even seeped across the cab controls. He used the wiper blades to smear the growth from the windshield, but his visibility rapidly waned.
Escobar switched on an interior light and jabbed a knife blade into a small twitching growth, making it retreat through one of the cracks. In the rear, the other two men kept driving back the infestation. “Damn it!” Yimidi spat and squirmed. “Some of it sprayed in my mouth!”
Bolton shuddered, but kept driving through the defile as fast as he dared. The windshield became more and more opaque, until he could see through only a narrow opening, and he didn’t dare open a side window to stick his head out and peer ahead. Tumbled boulders made the path even more of an obstacle course, and he tried to steer around them as best he could.
Even with no visibility, he had no choice but to keep going or the algae would engulf them as they rolled forward. Clinging to his nav-screen, Escobar helped by calling out compass directions, trying to keep them going. Bolton was afraid to slow down.
While Yimidi continued to wipe his mouth in disgust, Vingh asked, “Does this rig have a collision-avoidance system?”
As he asked, the vehicle slammed into a hard obstacle, but the thick algae offered some cushioning. Desperate, Bolton backed up and then sped around another boulder. Escobar flipped switches on the dashboard, until the nav-screen switched to a ghostly gray-green view, showing objects in front of them. “There! Follow the screen image.”
Bolton did not argue. He increased speed, and in the nearly obscured glow of the headlights, he could make out the end of the long, narrow pass. Although he didn’t know what lay on the other side—perhaps a cliff or a crevasse—he kept going. They had to get away from the algae. Reaching the end of the narrow defile, he slowed, then committed himself and accelerated.
To his great relief, the terrain opened up, letting him roll the Trakmaster downhill at a high speed. The vehicle finally exited the canyon, reaching a hard, rocky surface that was bumpy and uncomfortable, but better than the infested, claustrophobic defile. Thick algae began to slough off the vehicle, dropping away as if in surrender.
“We’re not going back that way again,” Vingh said. “We couldn’t return to the camp if we wanted to.”
“We don’t want to,” Escobar insisted.
Everyone concurred, but Bolton heard anxiety in their voices, as they all wondered what lay in store for them on their way to Michella Town and freedom.
21
In utter silence, bound by telemancy, the group of shadow-Xayans slid smoothly through the tunnels beneath the quarantined section of the Sonjeera spaceport. They followed Turlo and Sunitha, who carried their digital charts and navigated the commando team through the complex and deadly labyrinth.
All dressed in dark clothing, they wore face masks to protect against any poison booby traps the Diadem had likely left around the sealed hangar. Light enhancers gave Turlo a greenish view of the catacombs. The air down here was cold and clammy, saturated with a deathlike stillness, and a musty, unpleasant odor. He didn’t like this at all, but he and Sunitha couldn’t go home until they had helped Tryn-Clovis accomplish his mission.
The shadow-Xayan team had well-coordinated movements, and they followed Turlo’s guidance without complaint. As they worked their way farther along under the spaceport, they grew more excited and intense. By now, they were approaching the resin-sealed hangar that had entombed the remains of Zairic and Cippiq and several long-dead converts.
With all the time they had spent on Hellhole with the Xayans, neither Turlo nor Sunitha were worried about “alien contamination.” Rather, Turlo was far more concerned about the Diadem’s traps and defensive measures. He knew Michella was desperate and prone to irrational, extreme reactions.
Sunitha followed close behind him, carrying an electronic blueprint provided by Keana Duchenet and annotated by the General’s loyalist, although both of them had memorized this complex network of passageways. Moving ahead, the shadow-Xayans were giddy in their belief that the mission would be a success.
He could tell Sunitha was beginning to question what they were doing. Turlo knew that the Xayans—even in their human-hybrid forms—were so different that he could never fully understand them, or trust them. What if the shadow-Xayans had their own purposes? What if the goal of saving Hellhole was not at all their highest priority?
Turlo paused beneath the green illumination of a tunnel emergency light and gestured for the others to remain there while he crept around a corner. He felt a chill run down his spine, but saw nothing down the adjacent tunnel. Sunitha pressed close, gave him a quick nod, and the team moved forward again into an immense subterranean chamber. After Sunitha checked the electronic blueprint, Turlo shone a light upward to illuminate a large mark on the ceiling, a hardened plug that covered a hole.
“According to the records,” he said to the shadow-Xayans, “the sealed hangar you’re looking for is five stories above us, encased in resin, completely sealed. Lord Riomini’s own team originally broke into this access tunnel, so the way is clear—at least for now.”
Upon reading the summary, Turlo had been surprised that the Black Lord would send people in here against the Diadem’s express orders, but he had been anxious to get tissue samples from the Xayans so his scientists could study them. Apparently, the Diadem’s forces had captured Riomini’s team here in the tunnels and then, irrationally terrified of alien contamination, she had incinerated the team—alive.
“We’ve all been around the shadow-Xayans and the slickwater. The whole idea of contamination is nonsense,”
Sunitha said.
“Not to Michella,” said Turlo. He carefully studied the vital information Jacobi had provided, seeing that Michella had installed even more defensive fail-safes, poison booby traps, and possible explosives in the time since. Now he looked around uneasily, knowing the incredible risk they were all taking.
“We will take care of any traps with telemancy,” Tryn-Clovis said.
Turlo sniffed and picked up the odor of something dead again. Maybe it was a premonition.…
Knowing how close they were to the entombed passenger pod, the shadow-Xayans were impatient to proceed. Tryn-Clovis stared upward with his spiraling eyes. “Step back out of the way.” Phantom flares of illumination flitted around the convert’s head, then a long blue blade of energy shot toward the sealed hole. He cut through the resin with his directed telemancy, and the solid plug fell to the floor and rolled against a wall. Tryn-Clovis nodded. “Now we have access.”
Without speaking, the shadow-Xayan commandos raised themselves with telemancy, lifting their bodies up through the opening. Squiggles of energy snapped and burst in the air around them. Turlo felt a jerk on his body, and he and his wife were hauled upward, following the group.
They all gathered in a chamber on the next level up. Several shadow-Xayan commandos brought forth silvery metal balls, which hovered in the air. Tryn-Clovis gestured. “Send them in.”
As if fired from a gun, the telemancy-propelled balls shot into the shaft overhead, whistling through the air. Ahead, Turlo heard sharp pops, followed by hissing sounds, and he protectively pushed Sunitha away. “I think they triggered the poison gas.” Though he and his wife wore protective facemasks, he instinctively held his breath as white, filmy smoke exuded from the access tunnel and curled around the commando team. But the shadow-Xayans used their telemancy to push the gas away into the catacombs, where it dissipated harmlessly.
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