Hellhole Awakening

by Brian Herbert

  He dispatched squadrons of fighter craft to saturate-bomb the lunar mining operations with crude new explosives, wrecking Buktu’s excavating machinery and stockpiles of materials used to rebuild ships. The remaining vessels in spacedock were also triggered to explode.

  With explosion after explosion, Percival became numb to the parade of devastation, but he didn’t let Anderlos leave. “You have to watch all of this.”

  “Why? I can already see how mindlessly destructive you are.”

  Percival looked at the man. “It’s not mindless. It’s necessary.”

  The large settlements beneath the ice sheet were buried, the entrances vaporized, the tunnels shattered. This was not a military attack, but a thorough deconstruction process. And when the last orbiting fuel tanks had erupted like small supernovas against the black, starry sky, Commodore Hallholme regrouped his vessels. The fighter craft landed in the launching bays, and the detached frigates locked onto their docking clamps.

  “If and when General Adolphus ever returns to Buktu, he’ll find that we’ve left nothing for him. Nothing at all.”

  As the stringline hauler departed for the Crown Jewels, the Commodore knew that he had nothing left either. He tried to tell himself that this made him even with General Adolphus, but he knew it was not true.

  97

  Commodore Hallholme had fled, leaving Hellhole safe—for the moment.

  While he was stranded aboard a damaged, nonfunctional enemy flagship, General Adolphus watched the Constellation task force escape. Though he knew the Diadem’s Glory wasn’t going anywhere, he signaled his other ships. “All functional vessels, head off in pursuit! They have no weapons, thanks to Xayan telemancy. Follow them to Buktu before they destroy the outpost there.”

  The captains of the refugee ships balked at the General’s order. One said, “Sir, we’re overloaded already, and we don’t have the food or life support for this many people. We need to start off-loading immediately. We won’t last the three-day voyage to Buktu.”

  Another captain said, “More Candela ships are due any minute now, and there are more behind them. Some will be in worse shape than ours. Half the vessels don’t have systems to keep people alive for more than a day or two.”

  Adolphus stared at the stringline hub, not willing to let his enemy get away, but unable to justify the pursuit. His adrenaline made him want to run the Commodore down anyway, to the ends of the universe if necessary; Percival Hallholme would either set up an ambush back at Buktu, or he would keep running all the way back to the Crown Jewels. Either way, the General realized that it would be foolhardy to chase him.

  “We’re not going after him,” he said. “Now that Hellhole is secure, we need to save the evacuees at Candela. Dispatch more emergency ships to assist Administrator Hu with the rescue operations, retrieve anyone in orbit who couldn’t get onto a stringline evacuation vessel.” Yes, that was his priority.

  Another hauler arrived on the stringline, carrying ships overloaded with refugees. One of the ships had a badly compromised life-support system, and many passengers had already lost consciousness after standing shoulder-to-shoulder for days. Although some had died, most survived, but they were hungry and gasping. Adolphus thought of the gaunt Constellation soldiers he had retrieved from Escobar Hallholme’s fleet.

  One of the new captains issued a breathless report. “General! When we left Candela, the asteroids were coming in. Impact was only a few hours behind us, so by now, the planet is destroyed. I hope Administrator Hu got more people off. She stayed until the very last minute.”

  Right now, his own recovery crews were boarding the remaining ships in the captured Constellation fleet, assessing damage, replacing ruined parts, reinstalling computer systems, or scuttling ships that could not be repaired. None of those vessels were in any shape to rescue evacuees from Candela, but Adolphus scrounged other craft to transport the ragged remnants of a whole planetary population down to Hellhole.

  While the operation was ongoing, the General looked around the battle-scarred bridge of Escobar’s flagship. “Now, somebody get me to a functional shuttle to take me back to the surface. I want my feet on solid ground, at least as solid as Hellhole can be. Time to get back to business.”

  Once he returned to Michella Town, grimy and exhausted, he was met by Sophie, who had rushed there from the prisoner-of-war camp. She threw her arms around him, and he responded in kind, pulling her close and feeling how real she was. They kissed, and he didn’t care who saw them.

  “I knew you’d find a way to win, Tiber.” She pulled back to look at him. “You’ve engineered a final flash of glory.”

  He shook his head. “The Xayans proved themselves. Without their telemancy, Commodore Hallholme would have won.”

  Shipload after shipload of refugees landed in Michella Town, and as the magnitude of Candela’s disaster sank in, the General concentrated his efforts on organizing the retrieval of the refugees, with Sophie’s assistance. He had already dispatched urgent message drones throughout the Deep Zone, requesting aid and sanctuary for the evacuees; Hellhole certainly couldn’t support so many thousands of additional people, and they would be distributed among the other frontier worlds. Sophie took the challenge to heart and managed the resupply and redistribution, providing food and shelter for the shell-shocked survivors.

  Next morning, General Adolphus and Sophie Vence worked in his study at Elba, receiving reports from the orbital hub and his ship commanders. At midmorning another flurry of vessels arrived from Candela, all of them filled with panicked evacuees. By noon, a final ragtag group of salvaged ships and loaded iperion ore boxes reached the Hellhole hub, apparently the last survivors who had gotten away from Candela, including Tanja Hu and Ian Walfor, who were on their way down to meet with him.

  Adolphus told Sophie, “We need to debrief them as soon as they arrive. And I also want Encix and Lodo here, along with Keana-Uroa, and maybe Tryn, too, if she can make it. Can you arrange it?”

  Sophie had already anticipated his request. “They can all be here, including Tryn, as well as Tel Clovis. I want to review the images from Candela—and I hope somebody can explain how two giant asteroids decided to smash that planet at the same time.…”

  Cristoph de Carre drove a Trakmaster from the camp near Slickwater Springs, bringing Keana-Uroa as well as Encix and Lodo. They emerged from the overland vehicle, and Adolphus invited the group into his residence. Both Tanja Hu and Ian Walfor came down from the refugee ships in orbit, accompanied by Jacque Nax and the malformed Tryn and Clovis. The alien Tryn glided along and touched soft-fingered hands to Encix and Lodo, telepathically sharing everything she had witnessed. Tel Clovis shambled along behind her, a severely injured man who could not stand straight; he took halting, erratic steps, as if learning to walk all over again.

  “It was a hell of a show, General.” Walfor uploaded recorded data into Elba’s screen and displayed it on the wall of his conference room. In silence, the group watched the last images of Candela: the first asteroid scooped through the atmosphere and shattered the surface, erupting in smoke, flames, and great clouds of dust. Shock waves flattened everything on the continents. Ripples of seismic fury shot across dry land; tidal waves roared kilometers high into the atmosphere.

  The second impact was even bigger, and dumped enough debris into the atmosphere to obscure the entire planet. On Hellhole, just one impact had nearly wrecked the entire ecosystem. Given what Adolphus had just seen, there could not be anything left alive on Candela.

  He paced the room, addressing Tanja. “If Ian Walfor had not accidentally spotted the threat, everyone on Candela would be dead now.”

  “The asteroids were not on a natural path,” said Tanja. “We had less than a week.”

  “That doesn’t sound right to me,” Cristoph said. “An asteroid orbit is years long, maybe decades. The chances of a celestial impact like that are vanishingly small—and for two of that size to strike a planet simultaneously is just not possible.”


  “It obviously wasn’t an accident,” Sophie said. “But that still doesn’t explain what happened.”

  “It’s what happened to Xaya,” Lodo said. “The death of a world. Now they did the same to Candela, because of Tryn and the shadow-Xayans, because of the huge telemancy burst they used against the Sonjeera stringline hub. It made Candela a target.”

  Encix’s thrumming voice reflected her alarm. “It is as I feared. We used great telemancy here to quell seismic unrest from the impact crater as well. Now our presence is known, and we will be targeted next … just as we were five centuries ago. Since we exhibited such telemancy, we cannot hide how close we are to ala’ru.” She and Lodo turned their smooth alien faces toward each another, sharing a thought.

  On the screen, Keana watched the replay of the slow and devastating impacts; a haunting horror was plain on her face. “What is it?” she demanded aloud, but spoke to the presence inside her. “Uroa, what are you hiding from all of us?”

  The Originals conferred with each other in telepathically linked unison. Finally, Lodo faced the General. “We have much more to tell you, General Tiber Adolphus.”

  Encix spoke: “The Xayan race has long had its factions. In a bygone time Zairic showed us the path to enlightenment, explaining that our racial destiny was to ascend and become more perfect than any other. But another group, the Ro-Xayans, refused to hear the truth, refused to follow that sacred vision. They vowed to prevent our race from achieving ala’ru. By any means possible.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” Sophie said.

  Encix turned her blank, alien face toward Sophie, and Lodo let out a humorless chuckle. “Could any of you explain your human factions and your wars in a sentence or two?”

  Keana was struggling with herself, and the voice of Uroa emerged from her throat. “We Xayans were close to achieving our potential. In another two generations, more or less, we could have been superior beings in all ways, our souls liberated from the material universe. But the Ro-Xayans were powerful as well. After arguing with our political and religious leaders, they left our planet and ventured among the stars. Eventually, they used their combined powers to divert a large asteroid. They aimed it, sent it toward Xaya.”

  Encix said, “The disagreements were so severe that the Ro-Xayans decided to destroy our race and our world, rather than allow us to ascend.”

  Lodo said in a sad voice, “Our mortal enemies are still out there, even after all these centuries. They always watched Xaya. When we awakened again from the slickwater, and this damaged planet began its rebirth, something alerted them. And our use of telemancy showed them how far we have come … and that we are a potential threat to them.”

  Keana struggled with the revelations from her mental companion. “I think they’re trying to reclaim this world, seeding it with the genetic material of creatures they took before the impact.”

  Sophie blinked in surprise. “That’s where the large animals came from? Those embryo canisters dropped in the isolated valleys? The herds crossing the plains?”

  “This also explains the strange visiting ships,” Adolphus added.

  Tanja Hu hung her head. “And when the shadow-Xayans protected Candela with their great blast through the stringline network, it was like a shout to the Ro-Xayans? Did they send two asteroids to destroy my planet?”

  “They snuffed out Candela to make sure we did not reawaken further,” Lodo said.

  Encix was grim. “What they did to Candela is just a start, General Tiber Adolphus. They know that the greatest concentration of reawakened Xayans is here on this world. We have very little time. Unless we achieve ala’ru soon, we are all lost. The Ro-Xayans will come back to destroy the planet.”

  98

  Under gray clouds that were uncharacteristic for Sonjeera, the Diadem stood with Lord Riomini and a group of leading nobles at the Sonjeera spaceport. Commodore Hallholme’s strike force descended from orbit, thirty large warships settling like a flock of birds on the paved expanse. Around the Diadem, Riomini and the Council members spoke in low tones. She wasn’t the only one to notice that Hallholme was not returning with a hundred rescued battleships from his son’s fleet. Disappointing.

  An hour ago, upon returning to the partially repaired stringline hub, the old Commodore notified Michella by codecall that he would bring in all of his ships, rather than take a shuttle down. As she watched now, she had to admit that it did make for an impressive show.

  When she’d demanded a preliminary report on what had occurred in the Deep Zone, he was not communicative, not even evasive. He simply didn’t answer. A hard knot had formed in her stomach, and she hurried to the spaceport. She hoped he was here to declare a victory of some kind, any kind. That would be best for all concerned.

  A small-statured woman in a red jacket and white slacks emerged from the spaceport administration building and hurried toward Michella and the official observers. The spaceport bureaucrat spoke in a small voice, like that of a child. “Eminence, Commodore Hallholme notified us that he has several hundred prisoners. His mission must have been a great success!”

  Michella felt a chill of relief. “He’ll have a grand story to tell for sure, something to add to his legend.” She prayed that General Adolphus was one of his prisoners.

  “I knew we could count on the Commodore.” Lord Riomini looked stony but imposing in his dress army uniform. He had been cool to her since her strong reprimand, probably still shaken, but she knew it was only a matter of time before he tried to find a way back into her good graces. Maybe she would see signs of his old personality today, and she would be receptive to it. The prospect of a big victory over Adolphus had put her in a good mood.

  Hallholme’s flagship set down closest to the noble reception party, and two exit ramps dropped. The distinguished Commodore walked alone down a ramp, limping as he always did from an old war injury. His silvery muttonchop sideburns looked unbrushed; his antiquated uniform appeared as worn as the man wearing it. His shoulders drooped as he marched toward the Diadem.

  Though she continued to smile, Hallholme’s body language told her that he had bad news.

  With a crisp salute, the old war hero said, “Eminence, I regret to inform you that I did not complete the task you gave me. I will present a full report of our operation’s failure at planet Hallholme, and I am prepared to tender my resignation.”

  Alarmed, she stared at the landed warships. “Commodore—your battle group appears to be intact. Did you even engage the enemy?”

  “We were about to, when General Adolphus’s alien allies destroyed all of our weapons systems. We had no way to protect ourselves. In addition to his own formidable defenses, the General has captured the ships in the Constellation fleet led by my son, whom he now holds in a prisoner-of-war camp, along with Major Bolton Crais, and thousands of loyal soldiers.”

  Michella paled. Lord Riomini stepped forward. “Were you able to inflict any damage at all?”

  “Many of the captured Constellation ships were disabled when we arrived, burning up in the atmosphere. Most of Adolphus’s fleet was nowhere to be seen, and I could have defeated him handily if the aliens had not struck.”

  Deeply concerned, Michella said, “Commodore, shortly after your ships departed, a powerful energy surge traveled along the stringline from Candela and seriously damaged the Sonjeera stringline hub. Many ships were lost, and transportation across the Crown Jewels was disrupted.”

  Hallholme gave a somber nod. “Probably the same energy they used against me. They would have seized my entire battle group if I hadn’t made a tactical withdrawal. We returned via Buktu and used special teams to destroy as much as we could. We took the rebel population of Buktu as our prisoners.”

  Breathing hard beside the Diadem, Riomini said, “Eminence, I feel vindicated that I took this alien threat seriously! We must learn how to fight them, or they will defeat us. Our only connection, our only clue, is sealed within the quarantined hangar. We simply must break into th
at passenger pod and analyze the alien bodies.”

  The Commodore remained at attention. “I concur, Eminence.”

  Michella snapped, “That is not for either of you to decide!”

  Hallholme looked down. “Indeed, it is not.” He reached into his uniform jacket, withdrew a folded sheet of paper. “In my entire career, I have never suffered a defeat of this magnitude. Because I have utterly failed you, I no longer deserve my rank. This is my letter of resignation.” He extended the letter to her.

  Michella was furious about the Commodore’s defeat, but she knew that none of the lesser commanders serving in the Army of the Constellation could hold a candle to his abilities. She would be a fool to get rid of a proven war hero, even with his embarrassing “tactical withdrawal.” She needed to play up the fear of the aliens and make the populace even more terrified of an invasion.

  She tore up the resignation letter in front of him. “On the contrary, Commodore Hallholme—when faced with no other acceptable options, you made the right decision and retreated, keeping these valuable warships out of enemy hands. You will regroup and fight another day.”

  He looked at her silently, sadly, and then lowered his head.

  She pressed him: “Do you think I can do without you in times like these? I’m still counting on you to defeat General Adolphus! Even after this misfortune, you are my best military leader. The Constellation needs your wisdom and experience. You will retain your rank and your position, and you will continue to serve me—that is my explicit command.”

  She couldn’t understand why the Commodore did not look pleased. She was saving him from disgrace! Was the old man actually looking forward to retiring and being forgotten in his dotage? With a slight bow, he replied, “As you wish, Eminence.”

  She looked long and hard at the Commodore. “I want you to work with Lord Riomini to bolster the defenses of the Crown Jewel worlds. Prepare us for every possible type of attack. I want to be ready for anything.”