Hellhole

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Sophie arched her eyebrows. “He hasn’t been here very long. You sure you trust him?” The man had been working low-end jobs without complaint since his arrival. Then she laughed. “Or are you sending him on a snipe hunt?”

  Adolphus was amused by the reference. “This time there may actually be a snipe. Besides, choosing Cristoph de Carre has another potential benefit. Even if the excavation turns up nothing, at least I will have gauged and trained a man who could become a valuable lieutenant.”

  “Always thinking ahead, aren’t you?”

  Adolphus took another bite of his steak. “Always hopeful. And if we do find Zairic’s museum chamber, all the better.”

  49

  Each time they crossed another name off the list, Ishop Heer considered it cause for celebration. Progress! And he had to admit this was an amusing game, even though most of the loose ends had very little political relevance anymore.

  Twelve names, descendants of the prominent noble families that had orchestrated the downfall of the Osheer line so many centuries ago. He had done meticulous research so that all of these people were real to him, and his resentment became tangible.

  Since he had only recently learned of the ancient plot himself, Ishop doubted any of these scions were aware of the crimes of their forefathers; but that didn’t change the basic stain of guilt in their bloodline. Ishop still blamed them. A matter of family honor. Honor. Ishop liked to roll the concept around in his thoughts. It made him feel noble.

  And, oblivious to their danger, they were easy targets.

  Laderna purred from the praise he showered on her, and she was as dedicated to the cause as he was. Erasing names was becoming a fore-play ritual for them; they made love each time they counted a new success, or moved their plans forward. Soon enough, though, this diversion would be completed and he could get down to the real business of figuring out how to make the proper return to the prominence he deserved.

  Five names out of the dozen had already been scratched off, and no one had even begun to suspect a pattern. There was no reason to; after such a long time, out of 183 noble bloodlines, the families had little obvious connection to one another. But he and Laderna knew. Everything was falling into place more smoothly than he had hoped.

  Laderna had preemptively taken care of the first victim, Lady Opra Mageros, by staging an engine failure in her personal aircraft. It had been ruled an accident.

  Then the deaths of Lady Jenine Paternos and Lord Azio Tazaar were neatly blamed on their bloody family feud; even the surviving clan members suspected nothing and had in fact ratcheted up the mutual violence. A side effect that didn’t concern him.

  The next elimination was even easier. The only son of elderly Lord Hirdan, ruler of planet Jonn, was a mountaineer, and he had vanished in a whiteout at 8,000 meters. The noble heir was presumed dead. Definitely dead, Ishop knew, because he’d shot a grenade from an aero-copter at a snow slope above the climber, causing an avalanche that swept the victim and his two guides into a deep crevasse, where no one was likely to find them.

  And then Evelyn Weilin, a charming socialite with a bright smile, expensive-looking clothes (costumes), and gaudy jewelry (fake), who had very little money remaining in her family fortune but refused to show it. She had a fondness for recreational drugs and managed to get herself invited to events where they were freely distributed to the guests. It had been easy to slip her a “special” dose of a mysterious powder that she was eager to inhale. Once it contacted the soft tissue of her nasal membranes however, the transformational acid ate swiftly through her sinuses and lungs, leaving her to writhe on the floor until her skull collapsed like a deflated balloon. No one ever found out how the drug had made its way to the party, or why no other guests had succumbed.

  That left seven names on the list. He would be almost sad when this little activity was over, and he knew Laderna enjoyed it as well. Afterwards, however, he could take his rightful place among the nobles, knowing that justice had been served, even if it took 700 years.

  A week had passed since the good news about poor Hirdan’s death on the mountaintop, during which time Ishop accompanied Diadem Michella to a number of Council meetings. He was a dutiful and competent aide, without whom she could not function – and that was exactly how he wanted everyone to see him. Whenever possible, he employed the phrase “for the good of the Constellation.” They would accept him into their little club and he would have a noble name again, at last . . . after he completed his personal little quest.

  Unfortunately, he did foresee a difficulty ahead . . . a challenge. One of the remaining names on the list was a Duchenet.

  50

  When he agreed to work at any job General Adolphus assigned him, Cristoph had expected to endure a year or more of humiliating labor as penance for the de Carre family’s previous allegiance. He had accepted that. Nothing could be greater punishment than being forced to turn his back on his ancestral estate and walk away from everything he had known, of course, but he had steeled himself for the worst the General might throw at him.

  Thus, Cristoph could not have been more surprised when, after less than a month, he was transferred from cleaning dust-scrubbers. The General summoned him and fixed the young man with an appraising gaze. “I am not a man to squander resources, Mr de Carre, and you are exactly the person for this particular job. Prove yourself – show me that I haven’t made a mistake in giving you this chance.”

  On learning about the project, Cristoph considered the idea of an alien treasure vault buried deep inside a mountain preposterous. He wondered if this might be a setup to humiliate him, but the expense and equipment the General was dedicating to the site made that unlikely. Besides, Cristoph realized with a heavy heart, how much further could he fall? He had chosen to go to Hellhole, had waited for hours to plead his case with Adolphus. Now that he had a chance to work on something more significant than dust-scrubbers, he decided to take it at face value and do his absolute best.

  He accompanied Vincent Jenet and Fernando Neron (or “Zairic”) across the landscape to a line of as-yet-untouched mountains. With knowledge supposedly imparted to him from his alien memories, Fernando guided them. “It’s difficult,” the strange man said. “The surface topography was greatly reshaped by the asteroid impact.”

  For two days as the Trakmaster wandered up and down hills, into canyons and up steep slopes, Cristoph grew more and more impatient. And then Fernando told him to stop.

  The three exited the vehicle and stood on a weathered, scrubby ridgetop. Fernando paced back and forth, head cocked to one side, like an old dowser using a divining rod. He wandered half a kilometer from the vehicle and paused, staring at the ground, where a gray multi-legged snake scurried away from him. The Zairic side of Fernando spoke in a peculiar, distant voice, as if disembodied and shouting across the eons. “The museum vault is down there. Dig, and you will find it.”

  After marking the position, they returned to Michella Town and reported to the General. Once again, Cristoph was surprised and suspicious when Adolphus accepted the strange man’s assessment. “Do as he says, Mr de Carre. You shall have all necessary equipment at your disposal.”

  A week later, on an overcast, windy afternoon, Cristoph stood on the brushy hilltop where heavy mining machinery had blasted a deep shaft into the mountainside. On official documents, this site was an exploratory dig for possible platinum or bauxite deposits . . . nothing that would draw undue attention from Constellation inspectors.

  The dig went swiftly. According to Fernando-Zairic, the museum vault was originally several hundred meters down, but seismic upheavals after the asteroid impact might have altered the mountain’s profile. Detectors along the ridge measured pulses from the mining blasts and created a resonance map of the deep interior. Though he should have expected it, Cristoph was still amazed when the vibration signature revealed a significant void at the heart of the mountain, exactly as predicted.

  Fernando-Zairic was confident and pleased. “
Yes, it is there.”

  For the last part of the excavation, Cristoph employed a more precise drilling tractor. If there was an ancient bunker down there, he had no intention of destroying the priceless contents by blasting his way in.

  Cristoph remained with his foremen on a platform from which they remotely operated the drilling machine. According to projections, they would break through within hours. Fernando-Zairic alternated between eagerness and calm, while Vincent Jenet seemed a bit shell-shocked and out of his comfort zone. Dust blew from the excavations all around the site, and the noise of machinery outside the shaft made the air vibrate.

  The dented, well-used tunneling tractor had outriggers on it and a telescoping drill bit with an attached camera, so the operators could see the strata. Tapping a key on the screen, Cristoph summoned a history of the last hour of drilling.

  The female job supervisor on the drilling platform went by the nickname Nari, which supposedly meant “tough guy” in her native language. Gray hair poked from under the edges of her greasy hat; she was short and stocky, with a salty sense of humor. The woman was the most experienced member of the crew, having operated mines on two other planets, and Cristoph found he had much in common with her.

  Seeing a series of blips she didn’t like as she inspected the profile, Nari stopped the drilling machine and turned to Cristoph. “We’re almost to the void, sir, but we’ve got big igneous blocks in the next few meters. The interface is clear, geometrical. Even severe shock from the asteroid impact wouldn’t have created something like this. It’s not natural.”

  “Precisely.” Fernando-Zairic stepped close. “And it appears intact, as we hoped.”

  Nari looked at Cristoph. “So you want me to drill farther? No telling what’s inside.”

  “That’s why we’re here. Break through.”

  Fernando-Zairic added a note of caution. “Be as gentle as you can.”

  More than a kilometer into the mountainside, the borer machine continued its slow progress, grinding forward to break the protective wall of the supposed museum vault. Cristoph watched the image of gray rock change to static then an abrupt black as the drilling machine shut off.

  “Damn it.” Nari reset the imager, to no avail. She huffed. “The rock moved. Can’t tell if the machine is damaged.”

  “But we broke through. Look at the readings,” Cristoph said.

  “The vault is open.” Fernando-Zairic sounded more animated than Cristoph had heard him. “We must go down there.”

  “Retract the drill bit. Let’s go see what we’ve found.”

  After several more hours of cleanup with excavating machines, scrapers, and backhoes, Nari and her crew expanded the tunnel route and shored up the loose rock before she finally declared it safe enough for entry.

  The small group crowded into a crawler that worked its way down the fresh shaft until they reached the breach in the vault wall. Throwing caution aside, Fernando-Zairic led the way, while the other men put on lighted helmets and crawled through the hole in the rock wall to enter the alien chamber.

  Inside, Cristoph stared at the hall of wonders, shining his light to reveal details. Low, yellow illumination came from an unseen source inside the vault. The walls of the chamber had been assembled from thick, interlocking blocks adorned with bas-relief strips, friezes, and incomprehensible writing. Faint shapes wavered and crackled in the dusty air, ghostly squiggles of illumination that flitted about and vanished. Niches and sealed containers held ancient treasures.

  Vincent whispered, “Oh, Fernando! I never should have doubted you.”

  “That was Zairic, not me,” the man said in a bright, excited voice. “This looks exactly as he described it in my mind.” Fernando peered at the hieroglyphics on the walls, nodding absently. “I can translate this writing . . . but we have something more important to see.”

  Cristoph shone his helmet light upward, noting with concern that some of the ceiling blocks were out of alignment, having shifted after the impact and subsequent centuries of seismic rattling. Splits and sharp edges showed, and rock shards had rained down from the high ceiling to form a pile at the center of the cavern. “We might have caused some of that damage breaking in, along with the deterioration that was already occurring.”

  Nari was nervous. She twisted her hat around. “This place looks unstable to me. Let’s back off until I can get men down here to shore up the ceiling.”

  “I have something more important to do first,” Fernando-Zairic said. Moving with determination, he went to the opposite wall to stand before five L-shaped containers covered with more bas relief markings. The lambent glow and phantom shapes flickered around four of the containers, while the central chamber remained dark.

  Following him, Cristoph peered through the translucent lid of the nearest illuminated container and realized with a start what these vessels were – sarcophagi for the original aliens. “They’re coffins!”

  “Hopefully not,” Fernando-Zairic said. “They were designed to be preservation chambers.”

  Through the clear panel, Cristoph saw that the container was filled with a yellow, glutinous liquid around an immersed, fantastic body. A Xayan? The creature had a vaguely humanoid torso, head, and arms, but from the waist down the body looked more like a caterpillar or slug. In the preserving liquid, the Xayan looked gelatinous, its skin milky and translucent. The smooth, nearly featureless face had two large round eyes, but no mouth.

  As Cristoph stared, the creature’s blank eyes suddenly began to spiral. Vincent and Nari, standing next to the other sarcophagi, let out gasps. Then in eerie synchronization, the encased Xayans focused on their rescuers.

  Fernando-Zairic sounded pleased. “Four of the five have survived.”

  51

  Entirely focused on the preserved aliens, Fernando-Zairic worked feverishly to unseal the first lid, but couldn’t move it. “We must free them. They survived the long sleep.” Vincent watched in amazement and trepidation.

  Behind the transparent lids, the awakening Xayans showed a collective awareness in their spiral eyes, but they could not move. Overhead, phantom squiggles of illumination crackled softly in the air, flitting about before vanishing and reappearing.

  Without hesitating, Vincent helped his friend shove aside the lid. Nari and Cristoph de Carre struggled to open the second sarcophagus, then the third. As each box was opened, the strange creatures began to stir within the gelatinous liquid. In the vault’s dusty air, the ghostly whispers of light took on more definition, forming spirals that disappeared like smoke in a wind.

  The alien in the darkened container remained motionless.

  “My companions have slept for five centuries, but now our time grows short,” said Zairic. Hearing a sharp crack overhead, he looked up to see a few more pebbles split off from the ceiling and drop down in a rain of dust. The first chunks fell into the pile of debris on the cavern floor.

  Nari shouted, “It’s going to come down – everybody out! Move your asses.”

  Fernando-Zairic remained where he was. “We cannot leave yet. We must rescue them.”

  Vincent grabbed his friend. “I know how important this is to you, but this whole chamber is going to collapse.”

  The other man refused to leave the alien sarcophagi. “You don’t understand, Vincent. If we finish awakening them, there won’t be any need to worry. Trust me.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Cristoph looked warily upward as another shower of dust and pebbles pattered down. Spiderweb cracks extended out in jagged directions from the damaged ceiling tiles.

  Fernando-Zairic thrust his arms into the goop and grabbed the submerged alien’s torso. “Vincent, trust me. Help me lift Encix out.”

  Sure that the ceiling would collapse any moment, Vincent plunged his hands into the thick liquid. “You’d better be right about this.” The two men lifted, helping the alien sit up in the slime-filled sarcophagus. The Xayan – Encix? – was quite heavy. Fluid dripped off the creature’s head
and upper body as it slowly returned to a state of awareness.

  Fernando-Zairic hurried to a second container. “Quickly! Once they are conscious, they can sustain the vault with telemancy.”

  Flustered but hurrying, Cristoph and Nari hauled a third alien out of the liquid into the air, while Vincent and his friend rescued the fourth and last one. The four Xayan survivors moved their limbs with glacial slowness, weakly and phlegmatically.

  “These others are Cippiq, Lodo, and Tryn.” Fernando-Zairic glanced with sad, eerie eyes to the lone, dark sarcophagus. “Unfortunately, Allyf did not survive.”

  The Xayan survivor called Encix was the first to slide out of the sarcophagus and drop to the floor. Its caterpillar-like lower body moved with ripples of abdominal muscles. The other three Xayans emerged from their containers, rising tall and completely silent.

  The ceiling crack widened, and more blocks shifted, loosened. Nari yelled and bolted for the tunnel opening.

  Like a puppet show, the four awakened Xayans lifted their hands, revealing digits that were more like snail antennae than fingers.

  Vincent heard a terrible noise overhead. He grabbed Fernando’s arm. “Come on!”

  Huge stones moved, and the roof of the cavern fell inward. But amazingly, the blocks and dust stopped in mid-air, frozen in place. Squiggly lights around them seemed to emanate from the four silent Xayans. The force field created a cushion that held the debris in place.