Hellhole: Awakening (12 page)

“I support your goal, you know that.” The General paused, thinking of the telemancy powers he had already seen. “Just don’t ascend yourselves and vanish on me before we defeat the Diadem and ensure peace.”

15

At midmorning, Sophie stood near the shimmering slickwater pools, reservoirs of preserved alien memories. Her lightweight blue-and-gold jacket—a gift from the General—carried insignia of the Deep Zone Defense Force, and she wore it proudly.

While awaiting an aerocopter filled with a group of eager, and nervous, new arrivals, she saw continuing construction activity as workers framed another lodging structure on the west side of the property near the landing field.

This “resort” was the site of the original discovery of slickwater, where Fernando Neron had stumbled into the strange pool and emerged with a full-fledged alien personality and memories from the planet’s supposedly extinct race. After Hellhole cut itself off from the Crown Jewels, tourists from these worlds stopped coming, but increasing numbers flocked in from the DZ itself, people curious or determined to bring back the Xayan race and use newfound alien powers to help defend Hellhole. Thousands of shadow-Xayans already lived nearby in their own settlement.

To accommodate all the visitors, many of whom stayed for days before they could summon the courage to plunge into the slickwater, Sophie had arranged for tents, cabins, and larger lodgings. On a boardwalk that encircled the nearest of the three pools, Sophie surveyed a new group of volunteers pausing at the edge of the strange, viscous water. As she watched, one of them slipped into the pool, splashed, remained submerged for a very long time, and then rose to the surface with a changed, beatific expression and an eerie shimmer in her eyes. So many visitors had come to Slickwater Springs that she no longer tried to keep track of them; she had enough trouble remembering her own staff.

An office aide named Marie Cluré hurried up to Sophie, her steps sounding on the boardwalk. She had never summoned the courage to immerse herself in the pools, but had proved invaluable in managing the flow of visitors. Now she carried a printout of a high-res image. “I thought you should see this, ma’am! Observation sats detected something unusual out on the prairies to the north—a fresh expanse of wild, fernlike vegetation. It wasn’t even there on the survey a month ago. The growth is unbelievable. Like the whole plain was reseeded and watered.”

Mystified, Sophie looked at the image. “I’ve heard of patches like this cropping up all over.” Several months earlier, one of her scouts had discovered the explosion of red-weed growth, a resurgence of life to the devastated landscape. This new outburst of vegetation had appeared within the space of a few weeks.

“We’ll investigate it later,” she said, “when we don’t have to worry about the Constellation fleet.”

With the General’s declaration of independence, fear and tension had spread across the DZ. By now everyone had also heard the real story of the massacre on Ridgetop, when the Diadem had brutally retaliated against a frontier colony that had dared to defy her. The rebels knew what could happen to them unless they defended themselves, and some believed that the best line of defense was for them to gain access to Xayan telemancy.

Governor Carlson Goler had recently led a rally on Ridgetop, calling for volunteers to immerse themselves in the Hellhole slickwater, and a new group had just arrived via stringline. As the volunteers disembarked from the landed aerocopter, Sophie went out to greet and reassure them. For the most part they were strong young men and women, with a few hardy-looking older colonists. Regardless of their current physical condition, the slickwater would heal and strengthen them. By coming here, they had already agreed to join the Deep Zone Defense Force.

A man in his thirties, Rolf Jessup, told Sophie he was their unit commander, though they wore no uniforms. Jessup had a presence about him that she found appealing, an intensity and intelligence in his eyes and a confident way of carrying himself. He would become a different person—even stronger, she hoped—once he acquired a Xayan companion personality.

Jessup gave her a firm handshake. “We’re not much to look at, ma’am, but every one of us will give you as much dedication and fighting spirit as you could want. And we won’t lose this time.”

As the manager of Slickwater Springs, Sophie frequently encouraged visitors to acquire Xayan personalities, but she felt like a hypocrite. Though she had seen wonder and satisfaction on so many faces, she would never plunge into one of the pools herself. She still struggled to accept the changes that had occurred in her own son. Devon was the real reason she had left their Crown Jewel home of Klief and come to Hellhole, to give him a new start—but she hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected to
lose
him.

“He
is
still here, Sophie,” Adolphus had said when she expressed her concerns. “But he isn’t the same.”

“I know. He’s tried to reassure me—and I can convince myself rationally of all the benefits he says he’s enjoying from Birzh—more than he ever had before, more memories, a wealth of ideas, mental powers.” She realized she was just repeating the words Devon had told her, as if trying to convince herself. “He’s achieved and experienced an existence that he could never have dreamed of in his normal life.” She drew a deep breath, shook her head in dismay. “I see flashes of the old Devon, but … he’s not nearly as close to me anymore.”

“He and the shadow-Xayans may save us all.”

Now, as two new converts emerged from the slickwater, dripping wet, the liquid oozed off them and returned to the pool. They stood together, changed, amazed,
strong
. Sophie forced herself to congratulate them.

*   *   *

Returning to Elba that afternoon, she found Devon and Antonia in the General’s parlor. The slender, brown-haired young woman sat at the piano, picking at the keys with an expression of intense concentration on her face.

Sophie knew that Devon had been smitten with the girl from the moment she took shelter in their warehouse during a growler storm. Now the two were not just lovers, but were connected with a pair of alien personalities who also loved each other.

Devon perked up as his mother arrived, and sounded like his old self. “Come listen—Antonia is about to play a special song.”

Plinking the keys, Antonia said, “My mother was an excellent pianist and taught me how to play. My Xayan counterpart is also a musician, so Jhera and I decided to combine our skills. A duet like there’s never been!”

Antonia’s old life on Aeroc had been idyllic and luxurious, until it all came crashing down when a sadistic boyfriend murdered her parents. She had fled to the Deep Zone to escape him … but even Hellhole hadn’t been far enough.

Antonia-Jhera looked up from the piano, turned her shimmering eyes toward Devon, and played a few more notes. “Listen…”

As she grew more comfortable, Antonia entered a sort of trance, playing faster, adding familiar melodies with an unexpected counterpoint of music constructed on an entirely different set of mathematics. The composition started out lovely and haunting, a simple tune that became more energetic and complex as she immersed herself in it, then slowed and wound back to what it had been, then took an entirely different and equally complex route into another high-energy variation of the underlying melody.

Antonia kept exploring tributaries of the core music, then returning. From the distant look on her face and the spiral shimmer in her eyes, Sophie knew the alien Jhera was fully immersed in the performance. The hypnotic swirl of notes and tones seemed impossible from a piano, and the sound resonated throughout the parlor.

It was a concerto of sound different from anything Sophie had ever experienced. Hearing it, a flickering of images filtered into her mind, and her head filled with frightening but indefinable shapes. Instinctively, she wanted to flee the parlor, but just as she became conscious of her panic, she felt the opposite and sat back down, as if the music drew her back, welcoming her and wrapping its soothing notes around her in a comforting blanket of sound that contrasted sharply with the preceding sounds.

She looked at her son, who also sat transfixed. Seeing the love for Antonia in his eyes, Sophie began to cry. Maybe it was the music, or maybe it was her own heart.

16

While some Deep Zone worlds were rugged places fit for only the hardiest settlers, most were attractive in their own ways: untamed, with vast landscapes to explore, untapped resources, and far from the stifling Crown Jewels. Tanja Hu had no desire for any other world besides jungled Candela, but she could understand why her friend Sia Frankov loved Theser.

The planet had a wide-open landscape forested with spiny succulents, and was rich in minerals. Numerous ancient asteroid strikes had left deep and lush crater valleys, and the largest bowl provided a comfortable, sheltered habitat for Theser’s capital city of Eron. Moisture tended to settle in the lowlands. Low cloudbanks watered the agricultural fields that thrived on the porous soil of the crater floor. The city itself was built in terraced layers of the steep crater walls.

After passing through Tanja’s new stringline hub recently installed above Candela, she and Ian Walfor transported the six rebuilt warships along the direct path to Theser. Ambitious, Tanja had made the new iperion route a high priority. Her people had finished it at breakneck speed, and a trailblazer ship was already laying down a second line from Candela to Cles. She expected that in due time her world would become a major DZ commercial center.

Sia Frankov was a like-minded woman, and she and Tanja often got together on their respective planets, sharing a drink of the local alcoholic specialty, plotting their dreams, negotiating commercial alliances, anticipating a bright future for the Deep Zone. Tanja wished the damned military preparations would stop interfering with her commercial ambitions, but she also wanted to humiliate Diadem Michella after all the bitch had done.

Walfor used a powerful tractor ship to drag its towline of vessels that required stardrive engines from the Theser engineers. He seemed to enjoy operating the huge and unwieldy vessel so he could show off his piloting skills for her. Sitting next to Walfor on the command deck, Tanja smiled as she watched how smoothly he did it. And she would let him show off for her. Someday, they would be able to enjoy peace and she could think of romance; for now, she had to remain focused.

The cluster of vessels landed inside Eron’s massive crater. When ready, the six refurbished warships would return to help defend Candela.

It would have been far more efficient for the reclusive engineers to leave Theser, bring new equipment to Buktu, and work there, but they were adamant homebodies. Although Frankov was also frustrated by her recalcitrant workers she merely rolled her eyes the last time Tanja mentioned it. “I have tried, Tanja. But they are brilliant, and I’ve finally accepted that they won’t travel. It’s just the price I pay for their genius.”

Tanja wanted to see the strange engineers and deliver her ships to them, but she had another reason for coming to Theser as well. As part of her deal to share stringline costs with Sia Frankov, Tanja had agreed to take a difficult political prisoner off the administrator’s hands and keep her on Candela for safekeeping.

When the Deep Zone broke away from the Crown Jewels, three of the Constellation’s five territorial governors had been on Sonjeera and thus were cut off from their assigned worlds; Governor Goler from Ridgetop had thrown in his lot with the rebels. The last recalcitrant governor—a woman named Marla Undine—had been arrested on Theser and remained a political prisoner. But Sia Frankov didn’t know what to do with Undine and did not like having such a dangerous captive.

Tanja, though, had her own ideas.

As she and Walfor stepped off the ship at the bottom of the crater, a thin, elegant-looking woman in a business suit greeted them. Sia Frankov was accompanied by officers and soldiers of the Deep Zone Defense Force in blue-and-gold uniforms.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to land all those ships at once,” Frankov said. The wind in the bowl of the large crater whipped her long reddish hair. The Theser administrator gave Walfor a flirtatious gaze, then looked down the line of vessels that he had so smoothly set down, one after another.

“Barely broke a sweat,” Walfor said.

Tanja gave her friend a quick, warm embrace. Frankov said, “Would you like an early lunch?” By local time, it was late morning, with Theser’s sun only partly visible through a mist of low clouds above the crater.

Walfor grinned, but before he could agree, Tanja pressed, “We’d like to meet with the spacedrive engineers without delay. Could we have these ships moved to the fabrication center?”

“It’s always business first with you, Tanja,” Frankov said with an indulgent sigh. “If the Constellation withered away and left you without an enemy, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”

“If the Constellation withered away, I would find plenty of other things to do.”

The Theser administrator instructed one of her officers to have the ships moved, then she led her guests away from the spaceport. “But you still have to eat, and there’s no reason you can’t enjoy it. I know what kind of food you like. I already alerted the engineers that they have priority work, and I’ve had my chef prepare a nice meal. No delays, and no rudeness either. See? Everybody’s satisfied.”

Tanja forced herself to relax. “Sorry to sound so impatient, but I need to get Candela’s defenses in place. Every day, I expect—” She felt herself flushing, her muscles tensing. For all the terrible things the Constellation had already done, Tanja knew she had not yet seen the depths of what the Diadem might do. “I will be glad to have Governor Undine under my control, as a hostage and a bargaining chip.” She caught herself. “But I have no intention of bargaining.”

Frankov interrupted with a hard smile. “And for me it will be a relief to get rid of Undine. I can’t thank you enough for taking over as her host.”