Hellhole: Awakening (43 page)

From all around, alarms began to sound. Dozens of reports poured in from the drifting ships. Regaining his dignity, Riomini climbed back into the command chair. “Comm-officer, give me an assessment.”

“The Sonjeera hub is in chaos, sir. That shock wave slammed past us and blew out half the nodes on the main hub. It’s a disaster!”

They began to receive reports from the other five attack groups. The power surge hurtling along the stringline had not only torn apart their attack group and damaged the Sonjeera hub, the pulse had then ricocheted along the
outgoing
iperion paths. All five attack groups were torn from the stringlines. The pulse raced throughout the entire Crown Jewel network, spreading like shatter lines in a pane of glass and damaging some of the other routes.

“My God, what has Adolphus done now?” Riomini said.

66

Discouraged that his work in the museum vault seemed futile, Cristoph nonetheless continued to search and document the artifacts with the archaeology team. Encix and the remaining converts had all traveled out to the main impact crater to quell the seismic pressure, and Lodo had willfully destroyed the one Xayan item that might have helped protect Hellhole, and now Cristoph didn’t know if he could trust the Original alien. Did Lodo really intend to help? What was his priority?

And how could the asteroid impact not have been an accident?

The Original gave no explanation, and even Keana could not pry information from her mental companion Uroa. As if grateful for a distraction, Lodo remained intrigued by the strange black artifact.

Cristoph watched as the alien levitated the obsidian object with his telemancy, tilting the oblong artifact this way and that, spinning it, turning it over, examining it from various angles. He tried to penetrate it with his mind, as if it were a complex puzzle box. Squiggles and sparks of illumination danced in the air around him, glinting off the nested, inverted curves.

Cristoph remained uneasy about what the Xayans knew but refused to reveal. He asked Keana, “Has he made any progress?”

“Lodo knows nothing more than when he started,” she said. “It remains impenetrable.”

Lodo looked up. “Encix is guiding the shadow-Xayans at the crater … and they have lanced the planet’s wound.” His head swayed from side to side. “And on Candela, Tryn is also … ah, she and her companions are drawing telemancy from all of us, using it to—” His feelers quested.

“They are sending a strike down the iperion path to Sonjeera,” Keana said. “A telemancy blast.”

“Too much telemancy,” Lodo said, his voice a low moan. “Too much at once!”

Around them the walls of the vault trembled again, a shiver rather than the sharper crack of a quake. Keana looked up at the ceiling with a distant expression in her shimmering eyes. “It brings
ala’ru
closer.”

“And worse,” Lodo said, but Cristoph didn’t know what the alien meant.

The shivering in the air intensified, and even he could feel it thrumming through his thoughts. Lodo fumbled with the suspended black artifact. Keana seemed troubled. “The pulse keeps growing … there is something else.”

Lodo said, “This is very dangerous!” The alien cried out, an eerie, warbling wail, followed by a piercing scream. Keana buckled and fell to her knees, struggling with the inner Uroa presence. The black artifact rose up, seemingly borne on its own telemancy, and began to thrum.

“What’s happening?” Cristoph shouted. The shadow-Xayan workers in the vault clutched the sides of their heads, dropped to the cave floor. The black artifact screeched out a signal that warbled high up out of the range of his hearing.

All around him, Cristoph saw numerous other artifacts in the vault begin to glow, the carved patterns in the stone walls, the crystalline figures, the spheres of enclosed jewel-tone liquid.…

As suddenly as it had begun, the mysterious black artifact fell silent and tumbled to the stone floor, as if drained of power. Lodo struggled to right his caterpillar body; he stared, his large black eyes spiraling like whirlpool galaxies. His facial membrane emitted murmuring sounds.

“What was that?” Cristoph gripped Keana’s hand, pulled her back to her feet. “Are you all right? Lodo, are you hurt?”

Keana didn’t seem to understand him. “Uroa…,” she muttered, then focused on him. “His presence swelled up inside of me, but now it’s like an opaque net. He is silent.”

Cristoph picked up the black artifact from where it had fallen to the floor. It was silent and cold, as if it had expended all its energy. Sending some sort of signal? Triggering an alarm?

Lodo stood motionless, as if in shock. “Our combined telemancy is stronger than I had hoped … but not strong enough. Not yet. And we have more problems than you realize.”

67

After the telemancy blast down the stringline to Sonjeera, Tryn and the shadow-Xayans stood reeling and drained on the harbor shore, as if stunned by what they had done. Thunder rippled across the sky, and the air smelled of ozone.

Adolphus looked at all the alien converts, searching for a sign that the effort had worked.

Tel Clovis finally found words. “We succeeded, General! Our surge traveled down the iperion path like a telepathic tsunami. We knocked out the Sonjeera hub, overloaded the endpoints, disrupted the stringlines, and damaged some of the other Crown Jewel routes.” He was breathing hard. “From what I could tell, sir, we seriously damaged the Diadem’s transport capabilities.”

Tanja Hu threw her head back and let out a throaty laugh. “That means Candela and the rest of the Deep Zone are safe!” Though she was grinning, her anger remained palpable. “The old bitch got what she damn well deserved.”

Adolphus felt relieved to the point of exhilaration that the bold gambit had worked after so many things had gone wrong. Even without stringline travel, the twenty core planets were close enough to remain connected with normal FTL ships, but the Deep Zone worlds were much farther away and virtually inaccessible without long voyages. “We should be safe for months now, maybe even years. Plenty of time to get our defenses in order.”

The clouds had regathered over the harbor. “A downpour will begin soon,” Tanja said, turning her face to the sky.

Adolphus wasn’t worried. “At least rainstorms are just rainstorms on Candela, rather than horrific static storms.” He felt hopeful again, and he wished Sophie were there.

Tryn and the gathered converts remained linked on the harbor shore, and together they attempted to sever the psychic connection with the others on Xaya. The Original’s voice was heavy, her energy level low, exhausted from the effort. On each side of her the hybrids continued to hold hands, communing in their paranormal link … struggling. Adolphus sensed no exuberance in the group at all, and he began to realize that something was wrong.

Tanja kept talking, as if she had forgotten the recent bloody darkness. “After that blast, the Constellation will be terrified of us from now on. It’s time to go on the offensive, General. Fight this war the way it should be fought, and finish it! While they’re weak and reeling, we could take over Sonjeera.”

Adolphus drew his eyebrows together. “I don’t want to conquer the Constellation. I just want them to leave us alone.”

A sudden loud boom sounded in the fabric of the air, and a flash of light shot down from what must have been the terminus above. A beam of energy slammed into the telemancers and illuminated them. They let out an eerie, combined scream.

Adolphus backed away from the shadow-Xayans, tripped and fell as the shock wave throbbed in the air. His ears rang, and he could barely see. He staggered back to his feet, wiped his eyes, and tried to focus.

Tryn and the converts writhed, emitting a terrible combined sound that made the air pulse on the edge of the harbor. Trying to focus his vision, Adolphus saw the crowded shadow-Xayans collapse like harvested stalks of wheat, dropping one by one. The Original alien threw her rubbery arms around Tel Clovis, who stood nearest to her. She began to ooze, losing her bodily shape, softening, slumping. She collapsed with Clovis to the ground.

Adolphus ran toward them, but didn’t understand how to help. Tanja dropped beside one of the fallen shadow-Xayans. “General, they’re … leaking!”

The converts’ skin was gray and slimy; thick, mercurial water drained from their pores, mouths, eyes, and ears. Tryn continued to moan, unable to hold herself up, and Clovis grappled with her—or embraced her—but both were in severe distress.

Around them, other converts were dying, struck down by an invisible blow and strewn in awkward, impossible positions, as if their bones had become gelatin, their bodies horribly twisted, their faces distorted. A few survivors made mewing sounds of pain; somehow, they remained connected through telemancy, focusing their thoughts and appearing to send
strength
back to Tryn. Saving her.

Leaning over Clovis, the Original spoke comforting words to him, even though she herself had been severely injured. Her once-smooth face was half melted away, and one of her oversize eyes was gone, having merged into the alien skin.

Tryn was using all her concentration, which seemed to be keeping her and Tel Clovis alive, even as the other converts died around them. Weak sounds thrummed through her facial membrane, forming words. “We broadcasted more telemancy than we expected. Synergy … ricochet. Not
ala’ru,
just … death.”

Clovis calmed as he drew strength from Tryn, like clinging to a lifeline, and the Original kept herself intact as the other shadow-Xayans shared their scraps of remaining energy, offering what remained of their telemancy for her. Tryn held Clovis to her bosom as if he were a child, and continued to comfort him. She managed one more burst of comprehensible words: “We did not consider the ramifications. We may have attracted … unwanted attention.”

“Unwanted attention?” Adolphus demanded. “What do you mean?”

Around them, several dead shadow-Xayans collapsed into soft, oozing puddles. Tryn used all her concentration to preserve her integrity, keeping herself and Clovis alive.

As General Adolphus and Tanja Hu stared in shock and loss, the dying shadow-Xayans continued to twitch, then finally fell silent. Their bodies lay scattered on the ground, covered with a thick pearlescent film, dissolving.

68

The destruction at the Sonjeera stringline hub was unimaginable. Lord Riomini’s six battle groups had been knocked off the iperion path, many of the vessels dislodged from their docking clamps. Thousands had been killed in the turmoil.

Explosions continued to ripple through the hub station, while power surges shut down life-support systems. Sudden decompression had caused automatic isolation of whole sectors of the complex. Stringline traffic throughout the Crown Jewel worlds was shut down, with ships en route unable to reach Sonjeera. Commerce reeled. Heavily traveled routes were blocked.

Fortunately, Riomini’s six battle groups had not yet left the system, so the ships were able to limp home under their own engine power, while the large and empty hauler frameworks plodded back at much slower speeds.

It was total chaos.

Lord Riomini took the better part of a day to return to Sonjeera, where he presented himself, disheveled and agitated, to the Council Hall as ordered. His uniform was rumpled and torn, even the black trousers were ripped on one side. Usually vain about the way he dressed, Lord Selik Riomini didn’t seem to notice it now. He appeared to be stunned, no longer looked like a hero reveling in his accomplishments, the heir apparent to the Star Throne.

Diadem Michella was looking for someone to blame. She demanded explanations, but he had none to give.

Riomini could not hide his anger and confusion when he mounted the speaking platform and faced the bombardment of questions from the nobles. “We are still assessing the damage,” he said, his tone sharp. “As soon as we know what sort of appalling weapon General Adolphus used against us—and make no mistake, this had to be an overt attack from the Deep Zone!—we will do our best to counter it.”

“It was an alien weapon!” Michella said, her voice shrill. “That was no technology we’ve ever seen. The General is preparing his alien allies for an invasion. I’m sure of it.”

Riomini continued in a forcibly calm voice, dodging what sounded like paranoia in the Diadem’s voice, “In the meantime, repairs and reconstruction efforts are being staged. I have placed every qualified orbital work crew on notice. All Crown Jewel resources will be devoted to reestablishing our defenses.” He squared his shoulders and tried to project an air of confidence. “I have everything under control.”

“What if the General attacks us in the meantime?” called old Ilvar Crais. “He says he’s already captured our main fleet!”

The youthful but regal Enva Tazaar shouted out, “I think Lord Riomini has mucked things up enough already.” Tazaar had a classically beautiful face with large blue eyes and a patrician bone structure; her long blond hair was perfectly coiffed. Her face showed well-pronounced indignation. “General Adolphus took no action against us until Lord Riomini’s barbaric attack on Theser. Riomini
forced
this retaliation.” She sniffed. “If I, and other noble members of the Council, had been consulted in the matter, we would have disagreed with such a foolish and unnecessary provocation!” The Black Lord tried to interrupt her, but Tazaar continued with rising vehemence. “Lord Riomini, you are a ham-handed, inept military leader. Your ‘glorious triumph’ destroyed a defenseless Deezee world and ruined significant industrial and technological capabilities that could have benefited the Constellation after the current difficulties are resolved.”

Rolling his eyes, Riomini looked to the Star Throne, but Diadem Michella did not seem inclined to come to his defense. Then other nobles began shouting, pouring out their ire upon him. Riomini struggled to gain the upper hand, but Tanik Hirdan drew the attention of the audience. “You sent a hundred of our finest warships to planet Hallholme. That was supposed to be an easy victory, too, and instead those ships are lost. Another bungled decision, obviously.”