As usual, she had arranged for Ishop to observe from concealment, where special monitoring screens would display Riomini’s body temperature, pulse rate, and perspiration. As she looked at the Black Lord, though, Michella didn’t need any specialized images to see that he was sweating. She’d never seen him this way.
“Eminence, allow me to apologize, and explain—”
“I don’t think I need any explanations.” Her voice was cold and angry. “I want this lesson to hurt, Selik, so that you will remember it the next time you are tempted to get out of line.”
“I acted only for the good of the Constellation.” Now he didn’t even look shamed! “We must defend the Crown Jewels against further alien attacks, and the only way to do so is to understand what those creatures can do. My scientific experts were quite clear in their assessment.”
“And I was quite clear in my refusal! You defied me. Don’t you see? General Adolphus wants us to dabble with the specimens and become contaminated by them. This could be part of his overall plan, an insidious way to spread the alien infection. Breaking open the hangar would have been like triggering a biological land mine, and once the alien influence spreads across the Crown Jewels, the rebels wouldn’t even need to fight. They would defeat us from the first moment of contamination.”
“I … did not consider that possibility, Eminence.” He lowered his gaze, and at least had the good sense now to look cowed. “In warfare, it is always necessary to take chances. We cannot win if we do not accept some risk, even considerable risk.”
“You don’t understand the power those aliens wield. You weren’t there in the hangar when Ishop and I saw that creature exert a mental hold upon the human passengers. No doubt the creatures have already done the same to the entire population of planet Hallholme, including my own daughter!”
“But didn’t your man Ishop Heer journey there and interact with the inhabitants? Didn’t he himself go to the strange pools that supposedly contain alien sentience? Is he contaminated, Eminence?”
Michella considered this for a moment, then said, “Don’t try to turn this on me, Selik! Ishop is not infected, and we are here to discuss your actions, not his.”
As her voice became more shrill, Michella realized she might be overreacting, even irrational on the subject, but once she had established her opinion she would never back down.
She could see the retreat on his face, and again he looked cowed. “Are you going to strip me of my rank and command?”
She leaned back in her chair, took a moment to compose herself. “No. I am not blind to your power and influence, and I won’t risk another civil war on top of Adolphus’s rebellion.”
Riomini looked relieved. “I will not deny my ambitions, Eminence, but I serve you first. I would never call my supporters to engage in a civil war. I do hope to become your successor on the Star Throne, so why would I destroy the very Constellation I desire to rule one day?”
She nodded slowly. “Now, that is an answer I can believe.” The Diadem took a deep breath to calm herself. “For your years of long service, Selik, I am going to be lenient—to a point. Therefore my reprimand will only be between us, no public scandal. My people need to view you as a bastion of strength. Publicly, I intend to support you as always, but I will not forget your poor judgment—nor do I want you to forget it.”
She activated a screen on a side wall, which displayed a live image of Riomini’s bodyguards who had been captured alive during the raid at the hangar. The women looked disheveled, angry, and defiant, though not the least bit frightened. They were held in an impenetrable vault, a large white-walled cell with no windows and no furnishings. Michella’s own uniformed guards, who had captured Riomini’s team beneath the quarantined hangar, had been assigned to guard the women inside the sealed chamber.
She saw him swallow, then cover up the gesture with feigned defiance; that gave her a sense of satisfaction. Was he actually getting cocky? He remarked, “You must be afraid of my team, Eminence, if you need to place so many of your own people inside a locked cell.”
She smiled. That had also been Ishop’s idea. “Oh, Selik, my people may think they’re guarding the prisoners, but they’re all prisoners. I told you, one can never be too careful about contamination. The risk is simply too great.”
Riomini’s brow furrowed, but she pointed at the screen and transmitted a signal. “When you proposed your punitive strike on Theser, do you remember what you said to me? That the rebels needed to be taught an unforgettable lesson so they would never forget the consequences of defying my orders? It seems you need a similar reminder.”
Nozzles opened in the white walls of the chamber, and jets of flame shot out. The inferno came from all directions. Both the prisoners and her own guards barely had time to scream, scrambling on top of one another, clawing desperately for shelter. Within moments they all caught fire.
Rather than watching the screen, the Diadem kept her gaze on the Black Lord while listening to the interesting sounds of death. As Riomini stared, wide-eyed in horror, the whole chamber was engulfed in fire—Lora Heston, the rest of his captured bodyguards, as well as the Diadem’s own security staff. The flames continued to roar and swirl long after the screams had stopped; the bodies blackened, and the bones crumbled into ash, while the fires still filled the chamber.
“Was that really necessary?” His voice was hoarse.
Michella spoke as if she were a narrator. “Every speck, every shred of life, has been incinerated and sterilized in that chamber. For safety reasons.” She studied his patrician face, saw anger and dismay there. Yes, she had hurt him deeply, and he would not forget. “You needed to understand the seriousness of the situation, Selik. For every bad decision there is a cost, and you have yours. For now.”
The wall screen went dark. Riomini stared at it, as if he continued to see the cleansing flames and hear the screaming victims. Finally, his defiance had been incinerated as well. He bowed slightly. “As you command, Eminence.”
Her voice softened, as if she were scolding a child she loved. “Never forget that you’re not the Diadem yet. Don’t make me consider other choices.”
86
After days of disembarkations, the last stragglers of captured Constellation soldiers came down under guard in military shuttles to the large temporary holding area outside of Slickwater Springs. Even before the formal surrender ceremony, Sophie had assigned fifty of her best supply chiefs to prepare the camp using colony materials, and the town sprang up overnight. And filled up with prisoners.
Though Sophie remained crippled with devastation and disbelief from the loss of her son and Antonia, her well-trained work teams rushed to erect shelters that would protect the captives from the worst of the planet’s mercurial weather. Site crews arranged for power, water, and sanitation. Eventually, the prisoners would be dispersed to other work sites and villages, but for now they had to be kept under tight control.
Despite her grief, Sophie insisted on being at the camp, and Adolphus felt compelled to join her. He remained sick inside at the debacle of the surrender ceremony and disgusted at Redcom Hallholme, all those good people dead, including Craig Jordan, Devon, Antonia, and the guards. A slow burn of anger continued to flicker within him, held in check only by adherence to his promise of safety to the enemy. His honor.
A tension headache twisted the wiry muscles in his neck, and he felt a dull pounding at the back of his head. If he had been a lesser, more emotional man, Adolphus would have executed Escobar Hallholme—just like Tanja Hu had killed Governor Undine—and no one would have criticized him for it. Now he felt he understood the Candela administrator better.
But when Adolphus had attended the military academy on Aeroc, the underpinnings of military honor and acceptable civilized behavior were drilled into him. Tiber Adolphus had lived his whole life by that code, even after turning against the corrupt government. Commodore Percival Hallholme had beaten Adolphus only by threatening to massacre innocent civilians. His son E
scobar was worse, like a mad dog. It was clear to Adolphus that the Hallholmes had not learned their moral underpinnings in their youth, but rather on the battlefield, in their own desperate attempts to win at any cost.
Yes, if Adolphus had been a lesser man, he would have wrung Escobar’s neck himself. But he was not an animal and would not commit such a moral breach.
Out at the prisoner-of-war camp, a dusty wind blew grit and rattled the thin walls of the prefabricated shelters. He had originally assigned three hundred well-armed guards to monitor the camp—partly to protect the prisoners from any stupid ideas of escaping out into the perilous Hellhole wilderness—but Sophie demanded twice as many. Bitterness flowed like acid in her voice. “Just to be sure, Tiber. And I’m giving them orders to shoot to kill, if any of those bastards cause trouble.”
He saw the depth of pain on her face and knew how hard she was trying just to make it through each day. So he gave her the six hundred troops without argument, reassigning them from other duties. He had sent all but ten of his own DZ Defense Force warships to help with the Candela evacuation, so he had plenty of active-duty personnel available on the ground.
* * *
When he arrived at the camp, many of the prisoners were outside, sitting listlessly in the afternoon air. Others slept inside shelters, recovering from their own ordeal of living for two months on the edge of starvation; they were only just learning the truth that many of their comrades had been sacrificed in order to keep the rest alive for just a few more days. Now that they were well fed, getting good medical care, and were at least temporarily safe, they cooperated.
Most of them had surrendered quickly and voluntarily; very few had been forced into submission. Every one of the prisoners had pledged an oath of nonviolence, accepting the terms of surrender. Adolphus had not asked them to promise loyalty, because that surely would have been a lie in most cases.
Desperate people would promise anything when they were starving and near death. Given a week of full bellies and calm, Adolphus knew some would reconsider their promises to him, and he took precautions.
Sophie met him outside the fence. Wind whipped the hair around her face. Dust grains stung her eyes, but her cheeks remained dry. Sophie Vence was not a woman to shed tears easily; she had cried for her son, then bottled the rest up inside, sealing her emotions with anger toward the Constellation invaders. Adolphus knew she wasn’t finished grieving yet, although she pretended to be strong near him.
“Every hour, Tiber, I can barely stop myself from marching into the camp’s headquarters tent to tear Escobar Hallholme apart for allowing what happened.”
“Do you think it would do any good?”
Sophie still looked beautiful, but all the softness and humor had drained from her face. “I doubt it. After that treachery, he should at least have the decency to be ashamed, or express regret.” She shook her head and looked away. “I wanted to do so much for Devon. I brought him to this planet when he was just a boy, and this was supposed to be his bright chance, his whole future. Then he lost himself to the slickwater, and now he’s—”
Adolphus tried to console her. “You heard what he said, over and over. Because of the Xayans, he had a richer life with the Birzh presence than if he had lived a hundred lifetimes without him.”
She finally allowed herself a wan smile. “Yes, he told me that more than once. He wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything.”
Encix arrived at the fenced-in compound from the nearby shadow-Xayan settlement. The Original alien glided in silence, her stubby caterpillar feet flexing and carrying her along in a sinuous rolling movement. When the Constellation prisoners inside the fence saw her coming, they muttered in awe; some came close to the barricade, while others backed away in horror.
Adolphus knew that not many in the Crown Jewels even believed that the resurrected aliens existed; they thought the shadow-Xayans were nothing more than an odd religious cult that had seduced Princess Keana. But now the bizarre caterpillar-centaur creature stood before them, unmistakably not human.
Encix, Lodo, and the group of alien converts had been rocked by the destruction of the seed colony on Candela. The pain they felt through the ricochet of telemancy had damaged them collectively, setting back their progress toward ala’ru. All the mental power they had expended to quell the upheavals in the Hellhole impact crater, as well as the psychic blast that damaged the Sonjeera stringline hub, had drained the converts.
Encix turned her antennae toward the camp, then faced the General. “Are these your prisoners? Are you allowed to do with them as you wish?” He knew her voice well enough that he could tell she sounded anxious.
“I promised them safety and shelter.”
Encix hesitated. “That is a strange commitment to make to a rival faction that means to destroy you.”
Sophie’s voice was laced with scorn. “And obviously, they don’t all abide by those rules themselves.”
Encix continued to gaze ahead, regarding the thousands of human prisoners. “You are aware of how powerful the shadow-Xayans have become, how close we were coming to our ascension. That is all-important—more so now than ever! But time grows short, and we have been weakened with our recent expenditures of great telemancy. There is danger to us … but if all of these humans were to enter the slickwater, then we would certainly resurrect enough telemancers for ala’ru.”
“I’d be happy to dump them by the truckload into the slickwater,” Sophie said. “But I promised it had to be voluntary. That was the deal, even for people like this.”
Thrumming, Encix stared at the thousands of captured soldiers. “May I address the human who leads them? Perhaps I can convince them to make the choice themselves.”
Adolphus considered. “If you like, but I doubt you’ll make an impression. I’ll take you there.” He thought that maybe these prisoners could do something worthwhile after all.
Under guard, he and Sophie led the large alien to the camp’s main gate, where guards stood with their weapons shouldered. Although the locals were familiar with seeing the Original, Encix still intimidated many of them.
“We need to have a word with Redcom Hallholme,” Adolphus said. “I want twenty soldiers to come with me.”
When the gates opened, the guards led them to the central tent that Escobar Hallholme had chosen as his primary residence. When they approached the fabric structure, the Redcom waited for them outside. He still wore his Constellation uniform, which was now dusty, rumpled, and bloodstained. He stared at the hulking alien, and his eyes widened.
Encix turned to the General. “This is the man who betrayed you? Who was responsible for the loss of Jhera and Birzh?”
Sophie answered before the General could. “Yes, he’s the one.”
Adolphus answered differently. “This is the man I defeated.” He locked hard gazes with the gaunt Constellation commander. “Redcom Escobar Hallholme, may I present Encix, one of the Original Xayans who inhabited this planet before the asteroid impact.”
The enemy commander seemed alarmed and did not know how to respond. Encix spoke loudly through her pulsing membrane. “Red Commodore Escobar Hallholme, the Xayan race has need of your humans. Thousands of our lives are stored within the slickwater pools, and they require human hosts to awaken them, bodies and minds to share. Your people will be content with us, and they will be useful.”
Paling, Escobar turned to the General. “What is this … creature … talking about?”
Sophie explained, “They want you and the prisoners to immerse yourselves in the slickwater and take on a Xayan personality, so their race can ascend to a new evolutionary level. It is their holy grail.”
“None of my people will submit to that sort of inhuman … brainwashing!”
Encix was puzzled. “But it would give us numbers sufficient for ala’ru. That was our agreement, General Tiber Adolphus. We make no claims on your planetary colony, provided that you help us reach our destiny. These prisoners are defeated. Their fact
ion is weak. You are their master.”
“I could give the order, but I am bound by my own honor,” Adolphus said, “and I will remain true to my word.” His gaze cut like razor wire when he turned it on Redcom Hallholme.
“I only tried to do what was necessary,” the Redcom said.
“And you failed.” Adolphus was matter-of-fact. “Now your fleet has become part of the Deep Zone Defense Force to protect my worlds.”
“Maybe so,” Escobar said,” but I will not allow alien access to my gallant soldiers. You may force it on them, but it would be taking dishonorable advantage of a defeated enemy.”
Adolphus scowled. “Perhaps you are right, Redcom. I’ll give it further thought.”
Sophie’s voice carried an acid bitterness. “We’d better rename the Diadem’s Glory, Tiber. Let’s call it Hallholme’s Folly.”
His heart ached to see her pain. Normally, he would have avoided a choice that seemed petulant, but he would grant her wish. “If you’re serious about that, Sophie, I’ll do it—for you. We’ll talk about it later.”
“I’ve already changed my mind,” she said, “and I don’t like any name that refers to the Constellation government—not the Diadem, and not the name Hallholme. We should come up with a more suitable name, a Deep Zone name.”
“All right, Sophie.” He turned about with a last glance at Escobar Hallholme. “I’m going up to supervise the final consolidation of your fleet. I’ll go aboard your flagship myself.”
Hallholme’s eyes had an angry, defiant sparkle. “You do that, General. My flagship is yours. There’s no way I can prevent it.”
87
The bridge of the captured Diadem’s Glory felt very much the same as his own flagship, but different somehow … colder and haunted. Adolphus had never intended to make those thousands of soldiers endure months of starvation, but that was the fault of the Red Commodore’s impetuous decisions.
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