Hellhole Inferno (43 page)

Michella was shrieking, as if she expected Ishop to take care of the problem for her. Given his preference, he would have broken her legs and left her outside to be devoured by the creatures. Oddly calm and efficient, the shadow-Xayan guards hurried them toward the lodge building, but they didn't seem overly concerned by the insect predators.

Ishop saw that his arm was bleeding enough to soak his shirtsleeve. Around him, the nonconvert workers and visitors to Slickwater Springs bolted for shelter. Clusters of torpedo ants hurtled toward specific targets like a salvo of projectiles, although shadow-Xayan converts used telemancy to deflect the emerging insects. The ground continued to tremble, and the smoke storm rolled in over the valley, whipping up wind and pouring thick dust into the compound.

Despite her age, Michella scrambled ahead of the others up the stairs of the lodge building, where dozens of workers had already taken shelter. After Ishop and Sophie darted through the entrance, the guards slammed the main door shut behind them.

Some torpedo ants were already inside the corridor, buzzing around, launching themselves at the humans. Ishop swatted at the insects, felt a sting on the side of his neck. Ahead in the registration foyer, a dense cluster of the bugs rocketed into the torso of a woman who had taken shelter behind the main desk. Like bullets, they came out through her back. She screamed, stumbled, and dropped to the floor, gushing blood.

The predatory ants focused on that one victim to the exclusion of the others, tunneling repeatedly into her body. Ishop watched in horrified fascination as the woman writhed and finally fell silent. Intermittently, the tunneling insects emerged from her form, then burrowed back into her body.

Sophie Vence yelled to the shadow-Xayan guards, who grabbed the infested corpse and dragged it to the main door. With a nudge of telemancy, they discarded the body outside, where more torpedo ants converged from the emerging swarm.

Through the mesh glass of the lodge windows, Ishop saw thousands more insects buzzing around the building. Sophie was flushed, grim. “We're safe inside this building. Reinforced walls and glass, seals on all the openings.” She looked at the bleeding gashes on Ishop, Michella, and herself. “Come, I have a med-kit in my main office.”

When she bandaged Michella's minor wounds, she tossed Ishop the supplies so he could tend his own injuries. He was disturbed to see where a torpedo ant had passed completely through the muscle and out the front of his arm, like a tiny bullet. The wound was painful, and he was lucky the insect hadn't hit an artery in its passage.

Inside the lodge building, Sophie's people scoured the corridors and rooms, including the comm-center, to root out any other torpedo ants that had slipped inside.

From her office, Sophie peered through the reinforced glass, where others outside still hunted for shelter, as thickening smoke from the storm whipped around the buildings. She shook her head, looking gray and sickened. “I don't know how many people we lost out there. I hope the shadow-Xayans protected themselves and anyone else nearby. But that storm is getting worse.” She glanced at Ishop and Michella. “We're stuck in here now.”

Ishop stared at the old Diadem, wishing the insects had devoured her from the inside out, while he watched. Maybe there would still be an opportunity, though. He could always hope.

 

56

While Ian Walfor piloted his high-speed ship away from Hellhole and toward the asteroids, Tanja operated the sensors and mapped out the vast emptiness. Now that the sensitive Xayan satellites had pinpointed them on the fringe of the solar system, the twenty giant celestial bodies were obvious and ominous.

As the ship flew toward the asteroids, however, Ian and Tanja were looking for something else entirely.

“Ro-Xayan scout ships flew over Ankor and did several overflights on the Hellhole landscape, so we know what their craft look like,” she said. “Not detecting any of them on my sensors, though. If they're guiding and accelerating these asteroids with telemancy, I'd have thought the Ro-Xayans would be nearby. Their base or their main ship must be large, but I'm only seeing big rocks. Nothing else.”

“Maybe they didn't stick around after they aimed their projectiles and sent them hurtling to Hellhole,” Walfor said.

Keana-Uroa came forward from the ship's common area. “We know the Ro-Xayans have been watching the planet. They have been reseeding the landscape with native life-forms, restoring the original environment. All to destroy it again? That makes no sense.” She drew a breath. “I hope we can speak with them.”

“First we have to find where they are,” Walfor pointed out.

“The Ro-Xayans have other priorities.” Lodo worked his large caterpillar body toward the piloting deck. “But they
are
near the asteroids. I can sense them.”

With sensors alert for any anomaly, Walfor guided his ship toward the cluster of hurtling rocks. The twenty asteroids were oblong and jagged, with enough combined mass and momentum to deal a deathblow to Hellhole.

As the ship approached and Tanja could make out the details of the monstrous cratered projectiles, she felt an involuntary shudder. Walfor had shown her similar images from his flyby of the two incoming asteroids that had destroyed Candela. Her beautiful Candela …

Those wounds were raw and painful, but right now Tanja experienced more anger than outright terror. These twenty asteroids would leave nothing but a blasted, sterile planet, just as it was starting to heal and reawaken. The bombardment would wipe out every speck of life on Hellhole, perhaps even break the planet itself into cosmic rubble.

And the damned Ro-Xayans were doing it on purpose!

She left the copilot seat and turned to speak with Lodo and Keana-Uroa, unconvinced that the thousands of shadow-Xayans were as helpless as they claimed. “You have your telemancy. I've seen how powerful you are. Can't you just join forces and push those asteroids away? Deflect their orbits to save Hellhole, or at least grant us more time?”

“That would be like one person using a finger to nudge a spacecraft,” Keana-Uroa said.

“Two fingers, if it's you and Lodo together,” Tanja pointed out.

“Still impossible,” said the alien, waving his stubby feelers.

“Then what if we bring ships filled with shadow-Xayans? Thousands of hybrids. They could all work together.”

“Perhaps, with all that effort they could move a couple of the asteroids—but there are twenty of them,” Keana said. “The Ro-Xayans are numerous and powerful as well, and they will push back. They have already been applying their telemancy for some time to accelerate the asteroids. Even if all our converts came out here to join the effort, they could not counteract the considerable momentum.”

“Encix would never allow the converts to leave, no matter what the stakes,” Lodo pointed out. “She would not divert the shadow-Xayans from pushing toward
ala'ru
. That is her challenge, and her priority.”

“And just leave us all behind, helpless?” Tanja snapped.

Lodo looked at her with his large, gleaming eyes. “Yes.”

“How is
ala'ru
going to save Hellhole? That's the only solution you keep offering!”

“We are offering another possible solution now,” Keana said. “That's why we're here. If we can find the Ro-Xayans and convince them not to destroy their sacred planet, then we would at least have more time.” Her face carried a distant expression, as she communed with the alien presence inside her. “Like Lodo, I can sense the Ro-Xayans, too. The enemy is here, but I don't know where to find them.”

“Maybe they can sense us, too,” Walfor said as he maneuvered the ship around the asteroids. “It might flush them out, or might just make them hide.”

Walfor spent hours flitting among the cluster of rocks, mapping them, looking for some small vulnerability. Tanja's scanners detected no sign of the Ro-Xayan scout craft or their main base or ship, though she remained vigilant. She searched for evidence of an outpost on one of the asteroids, but detected no artificial structures. A closer reading, however, indicated that one of the asteroids had an anomalous density. Although the other nineteen seemed normal, the largest one showed a distinct peculiarity.

She frowned. “It's worth investigating.”

Walfor was happy to do whatever Tanja suggested. The trailing asteroid in the fusillade, the large stony body that would be the last to impact Hellhole, was the anomalous one. “Let's have a look.”

Keana-Uroa and Lodo went to a side windowport so they could observe the asteroid. Walfor spiraled the ship closer, rushing over the uneven, cratered surface. The asteroid was thirty kilometers on its long axis. When this projectile struck Hellhole at seventy kilometers a second, it would vaporize half a continent—and it was only one of twenty impactors.

“The Ro-Xayans are close,” Keana said. She turned to Lodo, who seemed more intent than usual.

The alien agreed. “They are strong. I can feel their minds, their collective telemancy. I can hear them in my thoughts … many Ro-Xayans!”

Tanja rechecked her scans. “Still no visual on them.”

Walfor guided the ship even closer. “Readings are verified. There's definitely insufficient gravity for a rock that size. There must be air pockets or low-density inclusions.”

One particularly large crater beneath them reminded Tanja of the bull's-eye scar that the original impact had left on Hellhole.

Then their ship shuddered, and the structural components groaned. Tanja could feel the vibration run through its hull.

Walfor yelped and looked at his controls. “We're caught!” The effect grew stronger, tightening around the hull. “Something has grabbed us.” He added more thrust to the engines, and the ship shuddered again. “And I can't break free.”

The asteroid spun beneath them, and the view tilted. Tanja's stomach lurched. The ship began to drop toward the asteroid and the yawning crater below them.

When Lodo hummed through his facial membrane, his voice sounded like a disturbed moan. “It is telemancy. More powerful than anything I have ever experienced.”

Alarmed, Keana said, “We can't break it. They've got me, too. Uroa is terrified. I can't—”

“It's
hollow
!” Walfor said, and Tanja saw that the crater beneath them was opening to reveal a yawning chamber, and the alien telemancy was pulling them down toward it, like an irresistible tractor beam.

Walfor applied more thrust, and the ship strained, but the grip of the Ro-Xayan force strengthened in response, dragging them downward.

The crater opened into what looked like an enormous hangar. As their ship was hauled inside, Tanja saw numerous starfish-shaped vessels also parked in the giant chamber. She recognized them as the swift and mysterious ships that had flown past the Ankor spaceport and distributed embryos across the Hellhole landscape.

“This is where the Ro-Xayans are,” Lodo said. “They have hidden themselves
inside
the asteroid.”

The large camouflaged doors that had been the floor of the crater closed above them. Walfor decided not to waste fuel or damage his engines by continuing his attempts to blast away. With the hangar door sealed overhead, even if he did regain control over his engines, he would surely crash into a wall. Held in the grip of telemancy, the ship was forcibly deposited in a large cleared area.

When the vessel came to a rest and remained still for several moments, the four looked at one another. Tanja said, “Keana, it looks as if you'll have your chance to talk to the Ro-Xayans after all.”

Lodo seemed hesitant, intimidated. “I fear they will not listen.”

“Then
make
them listen!” Tanja said.

Though Keana seemed intimidated, she forced herself to be calm.

“What do we do now?” Walfor asked. “Wait for them to knock?”

“Or we can go out and face them,” Keana said. “Is the atmosphere breathable?”

“I'll check, but probably. Xayans breathe the same air as we do on Hellhole.” Walfor ran a diagnostic and confirmed that the asteroid chamber had sufficient oxygen for them.

When they all emerged from the ship, the far end of the crater hangar opened, and Tanja saw many more Xayans inside—
thousands
of them—in a hollow grotto that comprised the interior of the large asteroid. Part of their colony.

“This isn't just a temporary base. The Ro-Xayans
live
here,” Tanja exclaimed, and then a second realization hit her. “They
inhabit
one of the very asteroids they're going to smash into Hellhole!”

 

57

Even with the imminent, and unbelievable, destruction of the planet, Bolton had much more personal concerns. Inside the red weed forest, he watched as Jonwi tended Escobar, carefully wrapping fresh leaves around the injured man. The Redcom remained in a coma, not improving, but at least he still lived, if only barely.

The Ro-Xayan had changed the wrappings several times a day, tucking the flexible leaves tightly around him and leaving only Escobar's face uncovered. It was late afternoon now on the second day; the tallest weed trees extended long shadows across the clearing.

“The plant has kept your companion alive,” the alien said, “but his injuries are deep and severe. I do not believe he will survive another day.” Jonwi turned his head to face Bolton. “Yet that matters little, since none of us will live much longer anyway. The asteroids will destroy this planet very soon.”

Oddly, despite the impending disaster, the solitary Ro-Xayan remained devoted to tending his oasis, continuing his work. Bolton compared the alien to Noah … but a Noah without hope.

“This is my purpose,” Jonwi said. “I can do nothing about the coming asteroids, but I can tend my garden until it happens.” His matter-of-fact tone sent a shuddering chill through Bolton's body.