Hellhole: Awakening (17 page)

Keana heard a distant thunder of noise, and she and Cristoph climbed to the lookout shack on top of a knoll. “A storm?” she asked.

“A
herd,
” said the voice of Uroa inside her head.

The sentry handed Keana a set of distance lenses. When she adjusted the focus, she could see a charging line of four-legged animals, like bison, moving across the valley floor, stirring up dust, razing the native vegetation in their path. She caught her breath. “So many of them! But where did they come from?”

“They are native to Xaya.” Lodo gazed out at the moving mass of animals and spoke the name of the creatures, a strange, incomprehensible word that vibrated through his face membrane.

Uroa provided Keana with his own memories of large herds of these creatures on the verdant plains of old Xaya, majestic beasts that moved together.

Beside her, Cristoph and the sentry were both awed into quiet reverence. The large animals plunged on, like a wave sweeping across the prairie. “They’re magnificent!” Cristoph said. “But those creatures should be extinct. The asteroid killed all large animals How could they come back?”

“There have been previous sightings of individual animals,” Keana pointed out. “Recently. Why now?”

“Many signs are apparent,” Lodo said in a mysterious, distant voice. “This planet is awakening.”

23

Once she learned the Constellation fleet was stranded and helpless, Sophie could finally catch her breath and get down to the real work. Surviving on a frontier world required austerity and careful planning, but she was convinced that the Deep Zone no longer needed anything from the Crown Jewels.

As Hellhole’s emergency quartermaster, she made a point of inspecting foundries, mines, even an explosives factory out in the bleak mountains. She had started construction on two new greenhouse domes, and assisted the farmers in providing fertilizers and hardy seed stock. At times, she felt like a watchful mother to the planet.…

Handing Adolphus sheets of account records, she said, “Even without enemy battleships breathing down our necks, our hardest challenge will be surviving the next few months. We’re laying in harvests and stockpiling preserved food, receiving deliveries from other DZ planets to fill in the gaps. We’ll have to scrape by on what we have, but we’re in good shape … under the circumstances. We can do it.” She lounged against his desk. “Want to come with me? I’ve got a delivery for Armand Tillman.”

Adolphus had spent two days in his offices at Elba reviewing the images of Escobar Hallholme’s fleet, sending the victorious announcement to other planetary administrators. He ordered the sixty ships in orbit to remain on alert and perform constant drills, and he test fired the weapons platforms in place.

Now he looked up at her and smiled. “Good idea. I need to thank him for the steaks he sent over—and for the meat that’ll feed our soldiers during the crisis.”

Armand Tillman was a prominent, resourceful businessman who had expanded grazing lands and provided insulated shelters so that his herd thrived even in the rigorous environment. Recently, he devoted his ranch output to the Deep Zone Defense Force.

Heading out to the open range on the fringe of Michella Town, their aerocopter traveled through the milky-gray sky of a dissipating smoke storm. Sophie saw the pasturelands and agricultural fields that Tillman nurtured with automated irrigation and fertilizer systems. On Hellhole, where a new agricultural matrix had to be laid down on the scoured landscape, cattle manure proved almost as valuable as the meat itself. Sophie’s greenhouse domes in Helltown produced large amounts of fruits and vegetables, but once open-field farming was established, the crop yield would increase by orders of magnitude, provided the plants survived the frequent storms, electrical discharges, and dust clouds.

The aerocopter landed near the livestock nursery building, and the noise of the aircraft brought Tillman to the doorway. He waved, and Sophie shouted through the dying engine noise as she stepped to the ground. “The stork has a delivery today. You’re the proud papa of some kids—goat kids. We brought two hundred embryos.”

Grinning, Tillman pointed out to his pastures where his cattle were grazing. “Beef isn’t enough?”

“Goats might not produce the best-tasting meat, but they’re hardy animals for a tough environment, providing good milk and cheese,” Adolphus said as he opened the back of the aerocopter to remove the sealed cases. “More food for the troops.”

Before Hellhole cut itself off from the Crown Jewels, Sophie had been using backdoor contacts to obtain shipments of equipment, supplies, and special items, including a case of goat embryos, ready for incubation. Tillman was a cattleman, but he would diversify his herd if called on to do so.

“I paid for these embryos myself,” Sophie said. “No charge to you, so long as you keep supplying the military at cost.”

Tillman helped them carry the embryos into a temperature-controlled room. “Doesn’t do me much good to make a profit if the Constellation fleet levels our settlements and arrests the survivors.”

“We may have taken care of that problem,” Adolphus said with a smile, then explained how he had circumvented the attack.

They passed glassed-in enclosures where cattle embryos were grown and nurtured in successively larger tanks. In small pens, Tillman’s handlers tended newborn animals that were so young that they were uncertain on their feet. “Once we have a large enough artificial herd with sufficient genetic diversity, we can let nature take its course,” he said.

They strolled outside, where Tillman pointed to fields of hardy alfalfa and grasses. “When they’re ready we’ll release the animals into the pastures to fend for themselves, breed, increase their numbers.” He scratched his sideburns. “They can be happy until they’re called to serve—or should I say,
be
served.”

Several of Tillman’s ranch hands began shouting and pointed to the south. On the horizon, Sophie spotted an ominous cloud coming toward them over the dry hills, looking like black static. “What the hell is that?”

Tillman squinted through a distance lens, then handed it to her. “Nothing good. Looks like millions of locusts. Never seen anything like that around here before.”

The General frowned. “Hellhole infestations don’t tend to be pleasant.”

The ranch staff began running. Tillman hurried toward a gate as alarm bells sounded. Workers streamed out of the facilities, powering up all-terrain rollers to start driving the cattle to shelters.

A blond, bearded foreman shouted orders. A strong gust of wind slammed the nearest gate shut, and Sophie pulled it open, her hair blowing. After the all-terrain roller had passed through the gate, she and the General climbed aboard as Tillman raced out into the grazing lands.

Tillman and his crew chased as many of his cattle as possible, driving them into runways that led to large barns. Sophie kept watch, saw a few outlier insects whipping in the air overhead. She had heard Devon’s stories of the cannibal beetles that had shredded an entire settlement of religious isolationists.

As the buzzing, blurry swarm swept toward them, the General shouted, “That’s enough, Tillman! We’ve got to get to shelter ourselves.”

“Half of my herd is still outside!”

“And you can rebuild it with the other half—but not if the bugs eat you.”

The locust cloud descended upon the buildings, and Tillman roared the vehicle inside one of the barns; Sophie leaped out before it had come to a stop and ran to the door controls as a few last cattle ran into the shelter. The thick doors rolled down and sealed in place as the buzzing outside grew louder. Inside the enclosure, the panicky cattle lowed and milled about, bumping against gates and walls.

Sophie and Adolphus joined Tillman near the sealed windows, wiping sweat and dust from their faces. “We don’t even know if those insects are a threat,” she said, hardly convincing herself. The tension grew as the insect swarm fluttered over and around the ranch, and they could hear the bellows and squeals of the remaining cattle stranded outside the shelters.

Sophie watched the swarm of colorful and delicate insects flitting about like butterflies. The bugs landed everywhere, settling on the cattle and crops, covering everything like a blizzard with brown and yellow wings.

As the nervous ranch hands whispered, Adolphus said, “They remind me of mayflies on Qiorfu.”

Tillman shook his head. “A swarm like that, hatching all at once, moving across the landscape. They look innocuous—maybe we got lucky.”

“Any creatures that survived the aftermath of the asteroid impact aren’t generally innocuous,” Sophie said. “We still need to be careful.”

The ranch foreman came up to Tillman, “Should I go collect a few specimens for the xeno-biologists back in Helltown?”

“Stay inside until they’re gone,” Adolphus said. “I wouldn’t be quite so optimistic yet.”

The straggler animals outside clumped together for protection on the far end of the pastures. The butterfly creatures continued to alight on them, but apparently without biting or stinging, since the cattle seemed unperturbed. They watched the slow, hypnotic tableau for more than an hour, and Sophie began to relax, her concern replaced by a sense of wonder.

When the butterfly creatures finally flitted into the air, they rose in a graceful swoop, like a migrating flock, and moved on. The colorful cloud was gone as quickly as it had arrived, flying off toward the hills in the distance. Adolphus suggested waiting another fifteen minutes, just to be sure, and then they ventured outside.

A few straggler insects swirled around the barn buildings before following the rest of the swarm toward the horizon. Ranch hands wore gloves and scooped up some of the sluggish bugs, sealing them in specimen containers.

As Tillman walked around the main buildings, he examined the structures and grounds with a dawning grin on his face. “I don’t see any damage.”

“Maybe we did get lucky,” Sophie said.

When they were finished with the inspection, Tillman went to his roller and swung himself inside. “Better round up the loose cattle and check them out,” he shouted over the engine noise. “You two want to come along?”

She and Adolphus climbed into the spare seats. Out in the pastures, the stranded cattle were becoming anxious, as if in pain. Sophie saw no reason for the animals to be skittish, but as the vehicle pulled up, she realized that the cattle hides were covered with blisters that grew visibly larger. The cattle lowed in pain and fear.

The General held up his hand. “Don’t get any closer, Tillman.”

With a lurch, the rancher halted the vehicle at a safe distance and stared. “What’s happening to my herd?”

He’d barely spoken the question before the cattle hides erupted, the festering sores bubbling and boiling. The blisters burst open to reveal millions of grublike larvae crawling over the agonized animals.

He prepared to swing out, but the General held him back. “No, those butterfly things laid eggs everywhere.” The swarming grubs began devouring the cattle, tunneling inside the bovine bodies, releasing a hideous stench. The animals staggered and collapsed, rotting where they fell.

“It’s so fast!” Sophie said.

Adolphus got on the roller’s codecall to contact the other ranch hands. “We need to get flame guns, burn the carcasses, torch the whole pasture before it spreads!”

Looking ill, Tillman swung the roller around, keeping his distance from the collapsing cattle. “Retreat to the barns!”

Before they could round up the fuel and flame guns and rush back out to the infestation, the larvae had devoured the carcasses and completed an astonishingly swift metamorphosis. While Tillman’s ranch hands approached the pasture with their equipment, another flock of the colorful butterfly insects rose from the shreds of dead cattle, testing their wings. The new swarm flew off, following the breezes to other feeding grounds.…

Sophie swallowed hard and stared out at the dead cattle, the battered grazing lands. “It’s hard enough to prepare for war against the Constellation. But the planet is fighting against us, too.”

24

With the doors sealed, Bolton sat at the boardroom table, listening to the private brainstorming session with the Red Commodore, Gail Carrington, Jackson Firth, and the fleet’s two best stringline engineers.

The five military haulers had been stalled in space for six days now. Crew morale had plummeted. Though the Redcom had twice given rallying speeches across the fleet-wide intercom, he had offered them little reason to hope. The search continued for the end of the outbound stringline that would guide them to Hellhole, but so far they had no luck.

When Carrington spoke, Bolton flinched at the vehemence in her voice. Until now, Lord Riomini’s observer had watched, but made few comments, and she surprised them all by unleashing her ire. “You were placed in command of this operation, Red Commodore. You carry the expectations of the Constellation as well as the personal support of the Diadem herself. Your ineffectiveness reflects badly on Supreme Commander Riomini—and I cannot allow that. In a crisis, a true commander does
something,
even if it’s not the right thing. You have done nothing, Redcom, nothing at all.”

“I’m holding this meeting to weigh our options.”

“You’re moving too slowly!”

Escobar spoke in an acid tone. “Thank you for your opinion, Ms. Carrington. Perhaps you would like to present me with a miracle solution?” He stared at her, and she stared back. Bolton could smell the tension around him.

“Find the other end of the stringline,” she demanded, “the one that leads to planet Hallholme. It’s out there, somewhere. Take risks. Venture farther. Obviously, it isn’t here, so we need to range wider, expand the search across a greater volume of space.” She gestured to the two engineers, who huddled down in chairs on the side of the table as if wishing they could be invisible. “The alternative is to sit here and rot.”

“Or starve,” Bolton muttered.

“Chances of finding the other end of the stringline are small, Redcom, but it is possible,” said the thinner of the two engineers, whose hair was pure white, though he did not appear to be old. “Based on the location of Substation Four, we can make projections.”