Hellhole Awakening

by Brian Herbert

  For her own part, Laderna was disappointed by the discovery. “If Enva Tazaar is tarnished, that complicates her selection as an appropriate marriage prospect for you. It may be for the best, anyway. Lady Tazaar is a bit too attractive to make me completely comfortable.”

  “Now, don’t be jealous.” Ishop felt elated. Either way, this explosive information would help him regain his noble title, and the Diadem would shower rewards upon him. Soon he would have his own planet, his own domain.

  With a long sigh, Laderna lifted herself from the sterile sheet. They still had a lot of cleaning up to do. She stood naked by the uncovered window, not caring if anyone looked in. “As soon as we’re done here, I will set about compiling a list of less beautiful candidates for you.”

  71

  Tension had frayed her nerves for weeks, and though Tanja Hu attempted to find her personal center again by focusing on administering Candela, the tragedies would not let go of her. Piled upon the tragedies she had already endured, now she had to add the horrific loss of the shadow-Xayan colony. The brave group had unleashed too much telemancy to strike the Sonjeera hub and protect Candela … and they had died from the unexpected ricochet. Only Tryn and one convert, Tel Clovis, had survived, both seriously injured.

  Their seed colony, sent here for safety, was devastated, and according to the grievously wounded Original, the painful surge had been felt by the thousands of other converts back on Hellhole.

  But as a result of the telemancy strike, the Deep Zone just might—might—be safe from further attacks by the Diadem. The boomerang of energy had caused some damage to the stringline terminus here, but her crews had completed the necessary repairs quickly. Regardless, normal was still a distant dream.

  Uneasy teams in hazard suits had cleaned up the gelatinous remnants of the dead converts; hospital crews did their best to tend Tryn and Clovis, though they were at a loss about what to do for them. The man was twisted, his bones curved and bent at absurd angles, and the Xayan seemed distorted, her pale, translucent skin stained and her face half gone. But both of them remained alive, held in a distant safety net of telemancy from the rest of the converts on Hellhole.

  When Tanja went to see the victims, tears burned her eyes. If not for their sacrifice, Candela might now be a smoking ruin like Theser. And five other DZ worlds as well.

  As soon as the patients stabilized, she would arrange to send Tryn and Clovis back to Hellhole, where they could rejoin their people. Maybe the combined telemancy would strengthen or even heal them.

  General Adolphus had already returned home and dispatched a full alert to all the other DZ administrators. Spy probes sent down several of the stringlines into the Crown Jewels confirmed that the Sonjeera hub was offline, but they had no way of knowing how extensive the damage was, or how long it might take the Constellation to complete repairs.

  When Ian Walfor’s small ship arrived on his run from Hellhole, she was comforted just to know that he was back. She went to the landing zone with the boy Jacque, whom Tanja had taken under her wing after Bebe’s death. By staying together, she hoped to ease her own hurt and his. She looked forward to seeing Walfor; though she had often been aloof around him, the man was a stable point in her life, a reminder of her humanity. She didn’t think Jacque would ever rest easy again, but the boy clung to her as if she were an anchor.

  Tanja and Jacque stood outside the Saporo Harbor terminal, sheltering themselves from a light rain under an overhang as they waited for Walfor’s ship to land. Her heart was heavy as she realized a bitter truth, that Ian Walfor was the only adult friend she had left in the Deep Zone, the only one still alive. With a pang, she recalled that she and Bebe had often gone together to meet him, and that Bebe had been skeptical of Walfor, considering him a charming rogue.…

  The thought of Bebe’s terrible murder made anger bubble up inside Tanja again. Looking down at the boy, she felt devastated, understanding his hurt; she squeezed his shoulder, wanted to make him feel better somehow. Even though she didn’t know what to do, had never imagined herself as a mother, she would not let him be alone. She was a businesswoman, a planetary administrator, and for years had cut herself off from her own irresponsible, unreliable relatives. In sharp contrast, Bebe Nax had been a woman after her own heart.…

  Jacque still seemed shell-shocked, and he suffered from continuing nightmares, but didn’t like to talk about them. Now she tried to give the boy a hint of a normal day. “Let’s see what Mr. Walfor brought. He always has interesting things in his cargo hold.”

  The boy nodded.

  As he usually did, Walfor had disengaged his ship from the stringline once he reached the Candela system. With his experience as a black-market trader, as well as the resource scavenging he did on Buktu, he liked to scout the outskirts of the star system, surveying the outer bodies for possible resources or outposts.

  The silvery ship came down through the patchy clouds, and sunlight glinted off its hull. Walfor had good enough piloting skills to land anywhere, and now he set down among the shuttles on the paved area at the harbor’s edge.

  Tanja grinned as the hatch opened, feeling a great sense of relief just to see his rugged, familiar face; she knew his warmth, his good humor, his easygoing nature. Walfor looked in her direction, but did not grin as he often did. His wavy black hair was longer than usual, and rippled in a gust of wind. She realized just how much she looked forward to having him back.

  When he stepped onto the ramp, glancing around in the hazy Candela sunlight, his face had a haunted look. She ran up and surprised herself, and him, by giving him a hug. “Ian, I’m so glad you’re here! We’ve been through … through so much here.” She shuddered, heaved a sigh. He was aware of the destruction of Theser, but perhaps not the rest. “Maybe it’s a good thing you missed it.”

  Holding him close, she spoke in a rush, with a hitching voice, not sure how much he already knew. She felt feverish as she talked, and her heart ached. She confessed, commiserated, and tried to remain detached, but failed in the attempt. Finally she ended with a sigh, forcing strength back into her voice. “At least Candela seems safe for the time being.” She looked up at him, her eyes red and shining with tears.

  But his expression said otherwise. “No, it’s not.”

  She finally saw past her own turmoil to see his grim expression. He had not smiled since arriving, gave no hint of flirtation, put no innuendo in his words. “The whole Constellation fleet is a trivial nuisance compared to what I found.”

  She drew back, not sure that she could take any more devastating news. “What? What is it?” Instinctively, she drew the boy close.

  “I need to take you inside my ship, show you the projections.” He glanced at Jacque. “Maybe we could do this in private?”

  She put a protective hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No, he stays with me.”

  “He’ll know soon enough anyway.” Walfor led them into the cockpit, where he sat down and called up his navigation records. “As you know, I’m always scouting the nearby asteroids and the comet cloud for easy resources to extract. Any time I find something, I can ask Erik Anderlos to send in the Buktu crews.”

  On the cockpit projection screen, a starry field showed a bright planet in the distance. “I cast out a scattershot web of sensors to identify and target nearby asteroids. Here’s what I found.” He displayed one image, then another, and another—a chaos of bright star points, some highlighted with crosshairs. “Look at these images, taken six hours apart.” Many of the blips had moved noticeably. “Now, when I eliminate known asteroids in stable orbits—” He waved his hand, selecting an algorithm so that most of the dots disappeared into the darkness. “Only two remain.”

  Jacque stared intensely, drinking in the data, but asked no questions.

  “Extrapolating the remaining orbits gives us this.” Walfor selected another projection, then stared at her, waiting for Tanja to see what he saw. “This is an exact science, and my instruments are very accurate.” The ellipses
of asteroid orbits painted themselves across the screen, and then the view panned out to highlight the star system, the sun and its five planets, including Candela itself.

  “Look at the intersection point.” He zoomed in. “Both of the asteroids are on a collision course with Candela. They’ll strike this planet—at the same time.”

  Tanja stared. “How can that be? The odds are inconceivable. This is ridiculous!”

  “Yes, it is ridiculous—and the asteroids have actually accelerated. They are moving at a thousand times the ambient velocity of other asteroids in the system. It’s as if they’ve been diverted, and shoved toward Candela like cosmic cannonballs.”

  Tanja was speechless. Considering all the recent crises, it was no surprise that her outer system survey probes had not kept a close eye on cosmic debris. “But what could have caused this? I’m no astronomer, but I don’t think that asteroids would just change course like that and pick up speed.”

  He zoomed in closer to the point where both of the asteroid paths converged on the planet Candela. “As crazy as it sounds, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Someone targeted your world. Either one of those asteroids would cause an extinction event, and both of them are going to strike. You’re fortunate I caught them on my instruments when I entered your system, or we wouldn’t have known about the threat.”

  “But what the hell do we do about it? How do we stop the asteroids from hitting Candela?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it. We have to evacuate the planet.”

  “Evacuate?” Tanja felt her thoughts whirling. “But hundreds of thousands of people live here! We couldn’t possibly move them all!” She looked up sharply. “How much time do we have?”

  “That’s the worst part,” Walfor said. “Those asteroids are shooting toward Candela like bullets. We have a week at the outside.”

  72

  Escobar leaned over the life-support bed, reminding himself he was the commander of this fleet, or at least what remained of it. A shiver ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the flagship’s bone-deep cold.

  Next to him, Bolton made a strange comment: “Carrington looks so calm and peaceful. One might almost think she is harmless.”

  “She’s not harmless,” Escobar said, “just neutralized. I wish she’d been killed when she fought my guards—that would have saved us the trouble of all this.”

  “You are the Redcom,” Bolton said with steel in his voice. “The decisions fall on your shoulders. You have to do what’s right and what’s necessary. Feeling good about it isn’t part of the job.”

  Surprised at his hard tone, Escobar flashed him a sharp glance. This glorified supply officer had lived a pampered life, married the Diadem’s daughter, and never had a trouble in the world. “What would you know about difficult decisions, Major?”

  “I know that I chose not to be in your position. Don’t you think I could have advanced beyond my current rank? My father could have bought me a command position—in fact, that was what they expected of me. But I had no interest in it.”

  “You aren’t qualified for a command position. Your personality doesn’t strike me as … leadership material.”

  “Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. In any event I refused, intentionally, much to my father’s disappointment. After the end of the General’s first rebellion, there were so many leftover military ships, and all of them needed captains. Heaven forbid that we reduce the size of the Army of the Constellation just because of an inconvenient peacetime! Ranks were sold like commodities, instead of earned. Do you know the fleet has an average of two officers to command every enlisted soldier? For economics and efficiency—not to mention military capability—the Diadem and Lord Riomini should have culled out a large percentage of the middle ranks.” He narrowed his gaze, glanced down at the comatose Gail Carrington. “Just as we have to cull more people now, Redcom.”

  Three times in the past week, Escobar had approved the cessation of food and life support to groups of randomly chosen sleepers, two hundred at a time. The lists that Bolton compiled were just names, mostly people he had never met, and the bodies were quietly delivered to improvised coffin ships in the fleet. As far as most of the haggard, still-awake skeleton crew knew, their comrades were still sleeping.

  The rations had been increased for those who remained conscious, and everyone ate their increased meals without comment; some of them consumed the new protein paste, assuming that their commanding officer had released all the remaining supplies, now that the trailblazer was due. The wiser crewmembers did not ask where the food came from. Escobar had been sick the first time he’d eaten the macabre protein paste, but ultimately he felt stronger because of it … strong enough to survive another day.

  Escobar tried to hide his grief over the death of Lieutenant Cristaine—such a bright and cheerful bridge officer, a woman with a fine future in the Army of the Constellation, not one of the “unnecessary” officers Major Crais had mentioned. Rationally, he knew that her death should mean no more and no less than the hundreds of other victims, but he did feel the pain more keenly about her. She was not just a name.

  And neither were the others. The energy requirements and nutrient solutions that would have kept those six hundred alive were distributed among the others, as well as the protein itself … but it still might not be enough to bring anyone out of this alive.

  Some of the abandoned frigates, now cold storage ships, held thousands of comatose crewmembers, including the first squadron of fighter pilots who had volunteered for sedation. At some point, he would have to consider disconnecting them from life support as well, but so far he had not done that. He needed to separate the heroic, useful volunteers from the grudging ones. It would take some sorting.

  For the time being, Escobar could lie, blame the hundreds of deaths on accidents, technical malfunctions in the onboard oxygen scrubbers of some ships, but he doubted many would believe it. The conscious crew were weak and listless anyway, and asked few questions. No one seemed to care where the extra food might be coming from.

  “We’re just prolonging the inevitable,” Escobar said.

  “And that’s what we have to do,” Bolton replied. “Prolong our lives as much as possible, keeping as many members of our fleet alive until the last possible moment—in case the trailblazer ship does arrive, and then we get our chance.”

  Escobar looked down. “Zabriskie and Caron should have been back two days ago.”

  “Optimistically speaking, not realistically,” Bolton said. “We shouldn’t give up on them yet.”

  “Many of us have.”

  Bolton’s voice was sharp. “You cannot, Redcom! You are the son of Commodore Hallholme. As the leader of this fleet, you are responsible for getting us to our destination.” He lowered his voice. “To Keana.”

  The scolding hit Escobar hard. Inwardly, he reminded himself of who he was, imagining what his father would say if he could see his son now. The pompous old Commodore would lecture him on everything he’d done wrong—and the old man would be absolutely correct in his assessment.

  “We’ll survive as long as possible,” the Redcom finally said. “And the next two hundred will buy us more time. And Gail Carrington will be among them.”

  Until now, he had been reluctant to disconnect Carrington, even though he despised Lord Riomini’s special operative and her secret mission. He had feared the wrath she could bring down on him and his family.

  Increasingly, he missed Elaine and their two boys. He longed for a quiet afternoon sitting on a terrace in the sunshine on Qiorfu, gazing out on the Lubis Plain shipyards. He remembered how the boys liked to dress up in child-size military uniforms and play soldier, pretending to fight evil rebels. He had been amused at their flamboyance. Now, though, if Escobar ever had a chance to talk with them again, he would tell the boys to choose a different career; he would try to explain the realities of commanding a military operation.

  Gail Carrington had once clung to the belief
that it was better for them to be lost entirely than to arrive in failure. It was easy to make high moral decisions in a warm, well-lit room with a full belly—a luxury he didn’t have now. Civilization imposed artificial realities, but that façade fell apart in desperate times.

  “We lost twenty percent of our crew when one of our haulers flew off into the unknown,” Escobar said aloud, as if Carrington could hear him “We lost six hundred more crewmembers in the name of preserving other lives. Two hundred and thirty-four have been killed in brawls, accidents, suicides, or from starvation. How I wish we could all have died as heroes in a blaze of battle, fighting for the Constellation, blasting the General’s ships … instead of dying by sad degrees like this.”

  He looked down at Carrington, no longer afraid of her. What could she do to him now?

  Dr. Hambliss came in, looking gray and beaten. “On this voyage I’ve lost more people than I’ve saved in my medical career. I wonder if there’s some sort of balance sheet, a form I have to fill out?” He heaved a shuddering sigh, then looked at the motionless form of the dark-haired woman on the life-support bed. “This one, though, genuinely deserves death. She’s ruthless and has enough blood on her hands to be sentenced to death in a Constellation court.”

  “We are the court now, Doctor,” Escobar said, “and as the Red Commodore I am the judge of her war crimes. Disconnect her. Add her body to the protein vats, and let’s hope her flesh doesn’t poison us all.”

  Next to him, Bolton Crais swallowed audibly.

  The ship-wide intercom crackled with a wild warbling alarm so loud he thought it might awaken the comatose patients. A breathy, panicked voice flooded through the Diadem’s Glory. “Redcom, we just received a signal from the trailblazer! It’s back!”

  Escobar stumbled, falling against the bulkhead. His vision fuzzed with gray, and he thought he might black out. A chorus of cheers echoed up and down the corridors of the flagship, a weak and ragged sound.