“Send as many as possible,” Escobar urged. “We have to help the Xayans achieve ala’ru. We have almost no time left.”
Bolton glanced at Escobar, who appeared perplexed by his comment, but Escobar cut off the transmission.
Percival rose from his desk, his thoughts whirling. This was the last nudge to his own epiphany. He could not do what Diadem Riomini commanded. He could not serve such a ruthless and bloodthirsty leader, could not make another fatally bad decision, another one that would fester within him for the rest of his life. And he believed that most of his own followers had a core of humanity within them. He had to believe that, and now he had to make that gamble.
He strode onto the bridge, feeling fresh determination. Yes, he knew what he had to do.
The crew was in a flurry as the evacuation continued, with Duff Adkins snapping instructions to one station after another. Seeing him, Adkins sprang out of the command chair, relinquishing the role to Percival. “Commodore, we just lost all contact with the Ankor spaceport … and there appear to be riots in Michella Town.”
Percival wasn’t surprised that panic had begun to set in down there. “They’re hindering their own evacuation efforts. Proceed with all possible speed.” He sank heavily into the command chair.
Adkins stepped up to him. “What was the message, Commodore? Did Diadem Riomini issue new orders?”
“He did, Duff. I do not, however, intend to obey them. I hope you will support me.”
The adjutant’s eyes widened. “That goes without saying, Commodore.”
“Good,” Percival said, “because I cannot stomach what the Constellation has become or what the Diadem demands of us. I’m betting that most of my crew will feel the same.”
Percival cued up the damning message the Black Lord had transmitted, the unspeakable orders that blithely commanded the absolute massacre of more than fifty planets. Knowing he was about to plunge off a precipice, he broadcast the message for all the vessels in his fleet to hear, along with the DZDF ships.
At the end of Riomini’s appalling message, Percival spoke firmly. “We are not going to follow those orders, because if we did, we would be mass murderers and war criminals, not professional soldiers. It will not happen under my command, and I do not intend to resign.”
He paused for a long moment, then added, “Honor is like a crystal goblet—even if broken only once, it is still broken. Sadly, in following the commands of both Michella Duchenet and Selik Riomini, I deviated from the course on which honor should have led me. In my past military career, I shattered that crystal goblet. But it will not happen again. Today we become more than a military force, fighting blindly for a tattered cause. We are a humanitarian force.”
Now, even if the goblet was shattered, Percival Hallholme would try to pick up the pieces.
71
Not so long ago, Bolton Crais’s wife had considered their marriage to be insubstantial and inconvenient. Back on Sonjeera when he’d received his rank of Silver Major—through noble connections rather than any demonstration of talent—Bolton had earned the nickname “Major Setback” because so many of his initial efforts had been lackluster at best.
As a consequence, his military career had been arranged so that he was placed in figurehead positions where he could cause no harm, yet he was given no chance to demonstrate his abilities. Redcom Hallholme’s supposedly glorious retaliation mission had been another setback as they were sucked into the General’s trap, and then the ill-fated escape into the wild Hellhole landscape … Bolton was tired of being beaten down by circumstances. Now he would do what he could to help organize the evacuation so the POWs could get away. The Commodore was sending down a retrieval mission within the hour.
When his own personality finally came to the fore, Escobar insisted that he be taken back to the POW camp. He explained to Sophie Vence, “My father will do what he can to see that they’re saved. Major Crais and I will make preparations on the ground. It is imperative that I be with my soldiers.”
Even if the shadow-Xayans had no inclination to leave, Sophie had to consider the evacuation of her remaining personnel at Slickwater Springs. She happily granted Bolton and Escobar one of her Trakmasters so they could roll overland to the large camp in the adjacent valley. She would take care of the rest of the shutdown work at her own settlement.
The POW camp was well maintained, but not equipped for the long-term support of thousands of people. General Adolphus had established it quickly as a holding area for the unexpected influx of captives. They had shelter, water, and regular supplies of food; the reinforced buildings offered sufficient protection from Hellhole’s merciless storms, quakes, and other natural hazards. Sophie’s people administered the camp, and the General’s guard forces maintained security, but everyone concerned would have happily sent all of the unexpected guests back home.
Now, as the Trakmaster rolled up to the fence gates and Bolton and Escobar disembarked, the concerned military prisoners came forward to meet the two haggard-looking officers, surprised and relieved to see them still alive. Exuding an air of confident leadership that Bolton had not seen before, the Redcom moved forward with gliding footsteps. He seemed taller, more powerful now … less angry, yet more commanding. After wasting away from his injuries, his muscle tone appeared to be returning.
“Are we going to be stranded here to die when the asteroids come?” said a man in a now-tattered sergeant’s uniform. “We haven’t even started to evacuate yet, and there are thousands of us!”
“Is rescue coming, sir?”
“We know how close the asteroids are, but we will not need rescue.” Escobar’s voice had a resonance now, and his words carried easily across the crowd. “Our best, our only hope is for the Xayan race to achieve ala’ru before it is too late. If they succeed in that—if we succeed—then we need not fear mere pebbles from space.”
The prisoners murmured. Another POW shouted, “That doesn’t help us much here. You expect us to just sit and wait?”
Bolton looked at his companion, surprised by Escobar’s words, and lifted a hand for attention. “Commodore Hallholme and the General have reached an accord in orbit. The Army of the Constellation is sending down ships to rescue us. They’re on their way.”
Now the chatter grew louder, more excited. Bolton’s reassurance had dulled the edge of panic.
Escobar stood like a statue beside him. He didn’t twitch, didn’t move a finger. Bolton had never seen the man so motionless. When the excited chatter died down, Escobar spoke again. “The rescue ships are irrelevant, because we have a far higher calling. Our time is short, and this is your last opportunity. I add my voice to the urgings you have heard before from the Xayans. Believe me, the only way we can truly end this crisis forever is if our Xayan allies achieve ala’ru. They need your help. I need your help. If you will join us in the slickwater pools and participate in the resurrection of the glorious race, you can help us accomplish what no other human has ever done.”
His eyes were intense, shimmering and spiraling. The prisoners seemed confused.
“I am a shadow-Xayan now. I was barely clinging to life, mortally wounded, and now I am stronger than ever before. The slickwater pools and my internal companion Tarcov saved my body as well as my soul.” His voice grew louder, insistent. “I want all of you to go to the pools and join the greatest force in the history of the universe. You can be part of something incredible—it’s not too late.”
The POWs were uneasy at Escobar’s comments, as was Bolton. “That wasn’t part of our agreement,” Bolton muttered, loud enough for the others to hear.
“But we’re going to be rescued!” shouted one of the uniformed men.
“We just want to evacuate, sir,” said one of the nearby soldiers. The murmur grew louder. “When is Commodore Hallholme sending down the transports?”
Escobar closed his eyes, as if he continued to shout in his mind, then opened them and turned to look across the wasteland, and up into the sky. High above,
a tiny dot grew larger, approaching swiftly. To Bolton’s surprise, the Original alien Encix drifted in from afar, borne along by her powerful telemancy. She landed gently on her long, sluglike lower body, and raised her torso to face the crowded prisoners.
Although he had come to know Jonwi during their time in the red weed oasis, Bolton could not read the expression on Encix’s strange face. She seemed displeased, determined, and her alien eyes took in the crowded, fenced-in humans … thousands of displaced people, stirring restlessly.
Her voice rang out like thunder. Bolton had never heard anyone speak so loudly without artificial enhancement. “The Ro-Xayans are coming to destroy us all! This planet is doomed, but I refuse to abandon my race’s destiny because of a lack of will. I will do what I must!”
Escobar-Tarcov looked at Encix, then turned to Bolton. “This is our last resort, Major Crais. We can no longer wait.”
Bolton felt a quaver of fear. “What are you talking about, sir? The Commodore’s ships are coming down. We’ll all be rescued.”
“Therefore we must act before then,” Escobar said. “Don’t you understand? If all these potential converts go away, it will be too late.”
Flying in from behind Encix like a flock of birds, hundreds of shadow-Xayans used telemancy to swoop in from their nearby settlement.
Seeing them, Bolton’s throat went dry. “What is this, sir?”
Escobar joined the arrivals as they alighted gently on the ground. The POWs backed away from them, confused and intimidated.
Bolton hurried after him, continuing to press, “Redcom, tell me what you’re doing! We’ve already solved—”
Encix and all the shadow-Xayans raised their hands in unison. “We do not have enough combined telemancy to accomplish what needs to be done … but we are so close that our agreement can no longer be honored. We need all of you to become shadow-Xayans—right now!”
The ground began to rumble beneath Bolton’s feet, sharp shocks from deep beneath the camp. The tremors intensified. Somehow, Encix and the shadow-Xayans maintained their balance like poised dancers, while the panicked prisoners lost their footing.
A jagged crack split the ground, and the POWs backed away in different directions to keep from falling into the fissure. The fence surrounding the camp prevented them from escaping. The General’s guards staggered forward and waved their weapons as the ground lurched, but the shadow-Xayans paid no attention to them.
Bolton stumbled to his knees, fought his way back to his feet. Escobar grabbed him by the arm and held him up, but somehow the grip did not feel supportive or comforting.
“Observe,” Escobar-Tarcov said. The tremors began to dissipate, but the ground cracks widened.
With a wave of telemancy, Encix and all the shadow-Xayans pulled at something deep underground. Silvery bubbles appeared, flowing ripples—and shimmering slickwater rose up like a flash flood, filling the cracks and spilling out onto the upper surfaces. The shadow-Xayans added their telemancy, but they stood unaffected. The flow of quicksilver liquid swirled around their feet, then surged like a living thing toward the fence, and all across the camp.
Bolton tried to break free of Escobar’s implacable grip, but the Redcom refused to let go. Slickwater bubbled up from crevices inside the camp, surging energetically, frothing and foaming. The prisoners backed away, trying to avoid its touch.
Shimmering waves splashed over the fissures in the ground. Crackles of static electricity bounced from wavelet to wavelet. Colored lights and sparks of psychic energy flickered like a kaleidoscope of reflections—glimmers of memories from an entire population whose lives were stored inside the crystalline liquid.
Encix commanded it, and the shadow-Xayans added their power. The flow of slickwater surged up from the ground. Struggling, Bolton heard shouts of dismay from the thousands of prisoners in the camp. The General’s guards couldn’t flee either, couldn’t open the camp gates in time, although they tried. The soldiers tumbled into the sinister liquid.
Escobar-Tarcov tightened his grip on Bolton’s arm. “This is our chance for ala’ru, Major! Everyone on this planet must become a shadow-Xayan.”
Bolton fought, but Escobar had a mad strength, enhanced by telemancy. The Redcom picked him up, and Bolton was helpless.
Escobar hurled him like a toy into the slickwater.
72
Responding to the alarming transmission from the Ankor spaceport, Cristoph had flown away from Slickwater Springs in the refueled scout craft. While racing actoss the continent, he tried repeatedly to get any response from the control center, but received only static and silence. No one answered, not the launching operations, nor any of the shuttles.
Ankor was one of two major spaceports on the planet. Right now, Hellhole needed the full launch capability of both—every shuttle, every craft of any kind that could ferry people off the planet in the little time they had left. But riots over interrupted fuel supplies had caused delays in Michella Town, and now Ankor had fallen entirely silent.
Swearing, he nudged his aircraft to greater speed. Even now, he should have been rounding up settlers from scattered mining operations, farm complexes, and other areas. But if they couldn’t get the ships launched again, it was all a moot point.
By the time he reached the Ankor complex, it was midmorning beneath a hazy, greenish sky—a color that often foretold bad weather. A severe Hellhole storm could further disrupt spaceport operations—and there was no time for that!
He saw other ships coming in, cargo craft loaded with passengers rounded up from outlying villages, atmospheric craft scouting for more refugees. Chatter over the comm came from many of the inbound ships; everyone sounded agitated because they were receiving no answers from the Ankor headquarters. Some ships circled the spaceport, sending more and more frantic transmissions. Others just landed wherever they could.
Exasperated, Cristoph took his heavy scout craft to one of the landing zones, alert for other ships that might get in his way. He saw many spacecraft, upboxes, passenger pods, even military personnel transports, just waiting in the paved launch zones. None of them were taking off.
Alarmed, he began breathing harder. People needed to be filling those passenger pods and shuttles, heading up to the stringline hub where they could be whisked off to safer planets in the Deep Zone. There was no time to be idle! On the ground he saw people crowded around the landed passenger pods, the launch areas, the gantry complexes. Fuel tankers sat motionless—probably empty.
After landing, Cristoph disembarked and ran to the crowds around the admin building. He heard a rising roar of angry shouts, loud commands from security officers who failed to keep the crowds under control.
“We need to get aboard shuttles or passenger pods!” someone demanded. “Why is this taking so long?”
During his flight, Cristoph had learned things over the broad-channel comm. Now that the Commodore and General Adolphus had joined forces to evacuate as many people as possible, all operations should have resumed by now. He feared that Rendo Theris had suffered a breakdown, unable to cope with the stress—and these people were going to pay with their lives if the launch activity didn’t resume.
He made his way through the multitude, heading for the headquarters building. If Administrator Theris had indeed collapsed, Cristoph would have to take over—and he was willing to do it. This would be far more difficult than running the iperion mines on Vielinger … and infinitely more important. Every delayed shuttle and passenger pod departure would cost lives.
The people milling about were terrified, with good reason. Given how little time they had before the asteroid impacts—less than two days!—they knew many of them wouldn’t make it off-world. But oddly, as he fought his way toward the main building, many of the people seemed calm and unaffected.
Then he realized they were shadow-Xayans—a great many of them mingling with the regular humans, as if to dampen their panic. He could identify the converts by their demeanor, the strange sheen in their eyes. No
w, in the background noise of the crowd, he heard many of the converts speaking in thrumming voices that had a distinctive alien tone. It gave him an uneasy feeling, and he sensed that something even more strange was happening here than the incomprehensible spaceport shutdown.
Before he reached the headquarters building, though, Cristoph felt a crackling energy in the air, a skin-crawling intensity of increasing levels of telemancy. Luminous tracings of light appeared in the air above the shadow-Xayans, growing brighter. Scattered throughout the crowd, the converts seemed to be concentrating, doing something together.
The crowd noises shifted to shouts and cries of immediate alarm from the normal humans, and then the pavement quivered under Cristoph’s feet. The press of the crowd shifted, people screaming as they scrambled away from a jagged crack that ripped open the wide landing field. Secondary cracks rippled away from the main fissure, and the ground tore open so violently that people tumbled into the openings.
Many of those standing around, though, were not running away at all. Shadow-Xayans stood along the edges of the largest fissure, doing absolutely nothing to help the people who had fallen in and were trying to scramble back out.
A flood of thick sparkling liquid welled up from below and spilled across the pavement. Slickwater! The shadow-Xayans were actively drawing from the aquifers beneath the spaceport, flooding the crowded landing grounds with the liquid. They were doing it on purpose!
Now the converts moved with unexpected speed and determination. They selected regular humans in the crowd, using telemancy to propel them into the slickwater. As the fissures continued to fill with shimmering liquid, the shadow-Xayans began a wholesale, forcible immersion of everyone in the area.
Several hundred meters away, one of the towering gantries collapsed, and the ground gave way beneath its foundation, which was swallowed in a widening sinkhole.
Cristoph finally made it to the headquarters building and pressed his way inside. The lobby was already crowded with masses of people, presumably others trying to escape the insidious flood of slickwater—and then he realized that these were shadow-Xayans. All of them.
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