Hell Holes 3: To Hell and Back

By Donald Firesmith

The beautiful young photojournalist, Aileen O’Shannon, is not who she seems. For centuries, she has been a demon hunter, a sorceress who has tracked and killed small bands of demons that occasionally crossed into our world. But that changed when she joined Dr. Jack Oswald’s expedition to study one of hundreds of huge holes that mysteriously appeared overnight in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle.

Instead of small sporadic incursions, hordes of demons now pour from these hell holes like water from a sieve. With bombing little more than a losing game of whack-a-mole, Earth’s armies are unable to destroy the portals. When Jack suggests a desperate plan, he is drafted to join Aileen and a team of other sorcerers and Army Rangers to travel to the demon homeworld. Once there, they will unleash a plague virus and set off a nuclear bomb to destroy the portal complex. It’s a suicide mission. But Aileen has given Jack’s wife her word to bring him back safely, and the demons have already killed three men under her protection. Just how far will Aileen go to avoid losing another?

Hell Holes 3: To Hell And Back will be book three in the Hell Holes series of modern paranormal fantasy, apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Firesmith
• Release date: Oct 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005396107

Donald Firesmith

Donald Firesmith is a multi-award-winning author of speculative fiction including science fiction (alien invasion), fantasy (magical wands), and modern urban paranormal novels.Prior to recently retiring to devote himself full-time to his novels, Donald Firesmith earned an international reputation as a distinguished engineer, authoring seven system/software engineering books based on his 40+ years spent developing large, complex software-intensive systems.He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs and cats.You can learn more about the author by visiting his personal website:http://sites.google.com/a/firesmith.net/donald-firesmith/His magical wands and autographed copies of his books are also available from the Firesmith’s Wand Shoppe at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FiresmithWandShop

Book preview

Prologue

I am Curatrix Maxima Aileen O’Shannon. Yes, that Aileen O’Shannon.

Ever since Armageddon, I can’t go anywhere without being recognized. I’m constantly harassed by reporters and pestered by paparazzi. I get hounded by prospective biographers, and more than one publisher has offered me obscene amounts of money to tell my story. Everywhere I go, I’m continually interrupted by people wanting my autograph, wanting to take a selfie with me, or just wanting to shake my hand.

Frankly, all I want is to be left alone… That’s the real reason I have written this book. My fervent hope is that this book will address the barrage of perpetual questions, thereby allowing me to regain some of the anonymity I enjoyed before the invasion.

But before I tell you about the minor role that I played in ending Armageddon, let me tell you a little about myself. There are so many sensational stories going around, I feel the need to set the record straight. The truth is strange enough.

This is only the briefest of summaries, so you can understand who I am and how I came to take part in the decisive war for our world. Someday, I may write my full memoir, but not now. The retelling of my entire life would take years and fill several bookshelves.

To begin at the beginning, I was born a little over 1,700 years ago during the pivotal reign of the Roman emperor, Constantine the Great. Yes, I know I look like a young woman barely into my twenties — but that’s merely an old woman’s vanity. To survive, I must take a powerful youth potion every few days. Even then, my body’s actual appearance is that of an elderly woman in her nineties. What people see is only the glamour spell I cast each morning: a beautiful young woman with the typical red hair and smattering of freckles of my native Ireland.

I was born and raised in a tiny village surrounded by a vast forest in what is now the county of Ballinasloe. For a great many years now, both the hamlet and forest have existed only in my memories. My father was our blacksmith and the strongest man in our village. He protected us from wolves in the winter and fended off roving bands of brigands throughout the rest of the year. I thought he could (and always would) defend us from anything, but I was wrong.

When I was twelve, a marauding pack of hellhounds attacked our village. The demons killed many that night, including my mother and father, my uncles and their families, and several others whom I no longer remember. But Fortuna (the Roman Goddess of Fortune), both good and bad, was merciful to me. Two guardians had been hunting the hellhounds. They killed the demons and saved me from certain death. My saviors were curators of the Tutores Contra Infernum, or Guardians Against Hell, an ancient secret order that has for millennia protected our world from demon incursions.

Back when I was a child, it was a struggle for villagers like us just to survive each winter, and an orphan’s chances were grim indeed. Thankfully, one of the guardians took pity on me. He pulled me up onto his warhorse and let me sit behind him as we rode back to his regional headquarters in London, or Londinium as we called it during the Roman occupation. He took me as his novice, and I was initiated into the Order four years later. As a member of the military arm of the Order, I have been hunting demons ever since.

For the two years before Hell Day, I lived in Fairbanks, where I was ostensibly working as a reporter for the local newspaper, the Daily News-Miner. Secretly, as a curatrix, or warrior-sorceress of the Tutores Contra Infernum, I was responsible for protecting Alaskans from marauding demons.

Then hundreds of huge cylindrical holes appeared overnight in the frozen arctic tundra around the entire globe. I joined a team of scientists hired by an oil company to study whether these holes posed a danger to the oil wells and pipelines. When demons exiting the hell hole we were studying attacked us, we were forced to flee south towards the safety of Fairbanks. My friends and fellow survivors, geologist Dr. Jack Oswald, and his climatologist wife, Dr. Angela Menendez, have recorded the events of those three days in their exciting books: Hell Holes Book 1: What Lurks Below and Hell Holes Book 2: Demons on the Dalton.

Photos and descriptions, including backstories of the key people involved in my story, are found in The Humans, an appendix in the back of this book.

1 - Coming Together

I dreamed of demons.

Thousands of them. Hellhounds and gargoyles, imps and devils poured out of their hell holes like enraged bees from their underground hives. The military’s bombs rained down like hailstones, turning the huge holes in the frozen tundra into blazing infernos. The explosions produced showers of dirt and sent body parts flying, but our onslaught barely slowed the flood of invaders. Streaming from their holes, the endless demonic reinforcements trampled over their dead and dying in their mad rush to join the battle.

Hellhound on Hell

Gargoyles on Hell

I cast one killing curse after another, but each spell drained a little more of my energy, weakening the following curse. Like a rising tide, the waves of demons crept closer. Soon my spells would become too weak to do much more than stoke their rage and bloodlust. I retreated step by step as they forced me backward, slowly at first, then faster as I frantically tried to keep out of their reach. If only I could have survived until our reinforcements arrived. But it was not meant to be. I tripped over the body of a fallen comrade, landing hard on my back. With the wind knocked out of me, I struggled to get up, but I was too slow. A hellhound lunged forward and bit my arm, dislocating my shoulder as it shook its massive head. My amulet flew from my grasp. The neurotoxic venom from the hound’s finger-long fangs burned through my veins on its way to my brain. After the hellhound dropped me on the cold ground, a gargoyle swooped down from the sky. It landed next to me, biting into my belly and slashing it open.

Strangely, I felt no pain. I looked up past the gargoyle’s vaguely catlike head and translucent black wings. A devil stood over me, making that strange coughing sound I’d come to recognize as demonic laughter. No matter—in a few seconds, I would be dead and unable to see or hear it. How sad, I thought, realizing that these would be the last sights and sounds I would ever know.

Devil on Hell

Imp on Hell

I woke up groggy with the terrible images of my nightmare replaying through my mind. At first, I expected to find myself still in my tent up on the North Slope next to the hell hole we were there to study. But that couldn’t be right. I was lying in a soft, warm bed rather than in my sleeping bag on the cold hard ground. Perhaps I was in the bunkhouse of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System’s Pump Station 2, where our team had sought sanctuary in the night after the invasion. But that too was wrong. I opened my eyes to find myself in a nondescript hotel room.

Then I remembered. I was in my room at the Goldrush Inn, the hotel at Eielson Air Force Base just southeast of Fairbanks. It was my new home and refuge until we launched our counterattack against the demon homeworld. Since that would almost certainly be a suicide mission, this drab little hotel room was likely to be the last of the countless places I’d called home over the centuries since I became a curatrix.

I glanced over at the nightstand. The alarm clock read 6:09 a.m., less than half an hour before I’d set it to wake me. I groaned, pulled back the covers, and sat up on the side of the bed. Its overly soft mattress whispered in my ear, just a quarter-hour more. But I knew better than to go back to sleep so soon before needing to rise. Instead of being more rested, I knew I’d only find myself more bleary-eyed when the alarm rang. I reached over and turned off the alarm. Sitting up, I immediately retrieved my amulet from its handy hiding place under my pillow and placed its sturdy chain around my neck.

After taking a quick shower, I looked in the large mirror covering the wall over the sink and counters. The old woman I had become stared back at me. She was covered in age spots and countless wrinkles, her thin gray hair did little to hide her scalp, and her long flat breasts lay like empty wineskins on the sagging mound that had been firm and flat stomach the night before. It reminded me of why I only had a small hand mirror in my bathroom at home. Still, I thought, I didn’t look that bad for a seventeen-hundred-year-old woman.

After using my amulet to recast the glamour spell that had faded during the night, I briefly admired the beautiful young woman gazing back at me from the bathroom mirror. My hair was thick and a radiant red, my skin was smooth and flawless, and my breasts had filled and risen like hot air balloons over a Kansas cornfield. I smiled, thinking, what use is mastering the mysteries of magic if one couldn’t use them to brighten one’s day and make one’s life a little better? And if that was insufficient justification, I could always rationalize my little spell by the many times my beauty had made my work easier. Men so enjoyed helping beautiful women, and there was always so much that needed to be done. Old woman’s vanity, indeed!

I dressed in the clothes that I had worn the previous three days. I had washed them in the sink the night before, and although I had hung them up to dry, they were wrinkled and slightly damp in spots.

I was about to hide my amulet by sliding it under my sweater when I realized that the time for such secrecy had passed. No more hiding… I would wear my amulet proudly, just as I did when safe in the Order’s hidden headquarters. I let it fall, hanging for all to see: a proud symbol of my membership in the Tutores Contra Infernum and the source of my magic powers.

I picked up my room’s keycard and headed out to face the new day. Leaving through the hotel’s back door, I walked down Kodiak Street past the gas station and entered the Yukon Club, the hotel’s closest restaurant. I strode up to the buffet line where the cook dished up my order of bacon, scrambled eggs, and breakfast potatoes. I poured a cup of coffee that I hoped was strong and got into line at the cash register.

That will be seven dollars and fifty cents, the sleepy cashier said after ringing up my meal.

That was when I remembered that my money and ID were in my purse, which was back at our abandoned camp next to the hell hole. I had completely forgotten it in our rush to escape the hellhounds that had formed the initial wave of the invading demons.

Uh… I paused, unsure of what to do next. Then I remembered my money belt. The confused cashier watched as I removed it and unzipped its hidden pocket. Her confusion changed to surprise when she saw the glint from the row of large one-ounce gold coins I always kept safely stashed inside. Reaching behind the coins, I removed one of the crisp new bills, unfolded it, and handed it to her.

This is a hundred-dollar bill, she complained, stating the obvious with a tone of mild annoyance. Don’t you have anything smaller?

Sorry. Just hundreds.

She held the bill up to the light. Apparently satisfied that it wasn’t counterfeit, she counted out my change. Do you need a receipt?

No, thanks, I replied. Maybe it was different for the civilian defense contractors who visited the base, but the Order placed a great deal of trust in its members. Many of us have been with the Order for centuries, long enough to no longer require receipts for our expense reports — at least not for things as trivial as meals and lodging.

I smiled to myself, remembering the time back in the early-1930s when I unexpectedly had to charter a seaplane from New York to the picturesque town of Trondheim, Norway. Our minister of finance was not amused, but what could I do? I was the only curatrix available who could put an end to a band of marauding imps attacking isolated farms and kidnapping their children. Anyway, that is a different story from a time before commercial aviation shrank the world to where I could use regularly scheduled flights to reach most of the globe in less than a day.

I didn’t see anyone I recognized among the airmen and civilians filling the main part of the restaurant, so I headed to the room in the back where I’d eaten a late dinner the previous evening.

I was mildly surprised to see Dr. Jack Oswald and his wife, Dr. Angela Menendez, already there, sitting in a corner away from the others in the room. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that they had left their rifles back in their hotel room; apparently, they were finally beginning to feel safe after our dangerous drive down the Dalton. They were deep in discussion, their breakfast barely touched. I walked over to join them.

Good morning, Jack, Angela, I said. I glanced at my watch. You two are up early; our eight o’clock meeting won’t start for over an hour. Mind if I join you?

Have a seat, Jack replied, smiling briefly as he gestured to the empty chair in front of me. In his mid-fifties, he was a handsome man with dark brown hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, and the lean body of a man who spent his summers doing fieldwork up on the North Slope.

I placed my tray on the table, sat down, and looked at the two scientists who had been my constant companions during the three days since we had left Fairbanks on our ill-fated expedition. It was clear from my new friends’ expressions that neither was happy with the way yesterday’s meeting between the military and the members of the Order had ended.

Are you two okay? I asked.

Jack, the petroleum geologist who had initially led our team, looked grim and determined. However, Angela, his climatologist wife, managed to look angry, afraid, exhausted, and resigned — all at the same time. She had dark rings under her bloodshot eyes, though I couldn’t tell whether that was from lack of sleep or crying.

Yes, Jack said with a tone that belied his statement.

No! Angela replied simultaneously, frowning as though I’d just asked one of the dumbest questions imaginable.

Now, Angie… Jack began.

Don’t you ‘now Angie’ me, Jack Oswald, she interrupted. "I may understand why you believe you have to go on this crazy mission. Hell, I might even intellectually agree with you. But don’t you think for one second that I’m going to be okay with it. I’m not. I’m just not. Mark, Bill, and Kowalski are dead, and we still haven’t been able to get in touch with Jill since we arrived back in Fairbanks. For all we know, she may be dead, too. And now, you’re going to Hell on a suicide mission, which has about as much chance of success as a snowflake in a bonfire. She turned from her husband and looked me straight in the eyes. So, Aileen, don’t you ask me again whether I’m okay because I won’t be unless and until you bring Jack back home to me."

I opened my mouth to respond, to tell her that, of course, I would take care of Jack, keep him safe, and return him to her. But I knew my words would ring hollow, given our mission’s minuscule chance of success. Okay, Angela, I eventually replied. I won’t insult your intelligence by making promises I might not be able to keep. I have my own doubts about whether we’ll be successful, or even whether a single one of us will survive. But I can promise you this. I will do everything in my power to protect Jack, and if I can, I’ll bring him back to you once we’ve completed our mission.

Angela stared into my eyes for several long seconds before replying. Aileen, I’m going to hold you to that promise. And if you can’t, you damned well better make the demon bastards pay. If I have to lose the love of my life, it had better be to save the world. Anything less, and the price will be far too high.

After that, we ate a while in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I couldn’t help thinking about all the things that could go wrong. What if we couldn’t open a portal to Hell? What would we find at the other end? Would we arrive undetected or in a vast hall full of demons entering portals to Earth? Could we immediately launch the plague UAVs, or would we have to find our way outside of an enormous facility? The list was essentially endless.

A little later, my close friend and protégé, Tabitha Freeman, walked up with her breakfast tray. This seat taken? she asked, setting her tray down before anyone could respond. Typical Tabitha: outgoing, friendly, and never shy about joining any group. How’s the food? It looks good, certainly better than I expected, given that it’s military chow. I half expected to see nothing but soggy scrambled eggs, fried Spam, and shit on a shingle.

What? Angela asked, surprised at the unexpected phrase.

Creamed chipped beef on toast. Used to be pretty popular during World War II. I actually developed a taste for it, though I can’t say it was ever any good for my girlish figure. She beamed, brilliant white teeth shining like sails upon a dark chocolate sea. Her smile was infectious. Even Angela managed a brief grin. Tabitha turned to me and asked, So, did you hear about the change in this morning’s schedule?

What change? I asked as she shoveled a large fork-full of scrambled eggs into her mouth.

Consula Romano talked to General Robertson, Tabitha replied. Told him members of the High Council needed to hear your official report before our combined meeting with the military this morning. The general postponed his meeting until 10:30 and gave us one of the training rooms in Amber Hall. She pulled out her phone. Damn. It’s a quarter to eight. We’d better get a move on.

I turned to Jack and Angela. I guess I’ll see you two later.

Yeah, see you then, Jack replied.

Angela merely nodded before pulling out her phone. I’m going to try again to reach Jill. Hopefully, she made it back last night and was merely too tired or emotionally drained to answer her phone. Her husband, Mark, was our first casualty on the North Slope. Jill was devastated when we sent her south with a family fleeing the demons’ attack on Deadhorse and the oil fields around Prudhoe Bay.

Tabitha took a final bite of her eggs and grabbed a piece of toast to eat on the way. We stood up, bused our trays, and zipped up our jackets.

With the sun hidden below the horizon and the eastern sky covered in clouds, it was still dark as we stepped outside. Walking south along Wabash Avenue, we turned right at the base’s bowling alley and arrived at Amber Hall, the salmon-colored headquarters building of the 354th Fighter Wing.

Dressed in camouflage uniforms and carrying sidearms strapped to their hips, the two airmen standing guard outside the front door were expecting us. One glanced at a clipboard and checked off our names after finding our faces on a page of photos of attending members of the Order. Good morning, Miss O’Shannon, Miss Freeman. He handed us each a lanyard holding a simple paper badge with our names and pictures on them. After lunch, someone will pick you up and take you to the ID Card Processing Office to pick up your CACs.

CACs? Tabitha asked, confused as I was by the unfamiliar acronym.

Common Access Cards, the guard replied. Official ID cards for military personnel, defense contractors, and others such as yourselves who require access to military facilities. Meanwhile, you’ll need to wear these temporary badges at all times.

Once we had placed the lanyards around our necks, he continued, The other members of your group are already inside. Senior Airman Mathews here will escort you to the training room where your meeting will take place.

The airman opened the double doors for us. Once inside, he led us through a small atrium and up a second, shorter flight of stairs. However, this time he didn’t take us straight back to the wing commander’s conference room, where everyone had gathered the previous evening. Instead, he turned right and escorted us down a long corridor. Just before the end of the hall, he turned left and led us toward the back of the building.

The airman opened one of the doors lining the hallway, and we entered a small nondescript classroom. I was surprised to see that the room was more than half full.

Three members of the High Council sat behind a long table placed across the front of the room. Consula Alessandra Romano (the head of the High Council) sat in her rightful place at the center, while Consul Bertrand Bedeau and Consul Liam Blakeslee sat to her right and left. At either end of the table, two empty seats made it clear that Consula Romano expected additional members of the High Council.

Consula Romano, Consuls Bedeau and Blakeslee, please forgive our tardiness, I apologized as Tabitha and I entered. I only just learned of this meeting.

Consula Romano acknowledged my excuse with a nod but remained silent as I quickly took an empty seat in the front row. Tabitha, as a lower-ranking curatrix, sat down in the chair behind me. While waiting for Consula Romano to speak, I glanced around the room and quickly considered what I knew about each person present.

Besides Tabitha and me, six other members of the Order sat at small tables facing the front of the room. Highly experienced warriors all, I recognized each one and had hunted with most of them. As befitting our rank, Curator Maxima Wang Cheng, Curatrix Maxima Faustina Giordano, Curator Maxima Jason Castellanos, and I sat in the front row. Curatrix Anala Archer, Curatrix Ceana McClelland, Curator Arthur Davies, and Curatrix Tabitha Freeman sat behind us.

Among all the curatrixes and curators of the Order, the High Council had chosen the eight of us to join the U.S. military’s assault on Hell itself. I couldn’t help wondering how any of us would survive. Would any of us, or were we all going willingly to our deaths?

Consula Romano waited until the airman closed the classroom door and headed back to the front of the building, before rising to her feet. All eyes turned to her as she said, Now that Curatrixes O’Shannon and Freeman have finally graced us with their presence, we can begin.

Consula Romano stepped away from the head tables. Taking her amulet from its hiding place beneath her blouse, she lifted its chain over her head. Slowly at first (but quickly growing ever-faster), she swung it in a large, vertical circle, stooping slightly at the bottom of each swing so that the amulet nearly grazed the floor. "Portal ad partum a Sancti Petersburg. Portal ad partum a Sancti Petersburg. Portal ad partum a Sancti Petersburg!"

As she intoned the incantation, bright red sparks poured out of the amulet’s devilstone, tracing a large vertical circle that floated motionless beside her. The air inscribed by the sparks began to shimmer. A second later, the ring of sparks transformed into a portal, revealing an impressively decorated office in the Order’s Saint Petersburg facility.

A grim-looking man dressed all in black stood waiting on the far side. Tall and unnaturally thin, the first impression he gave most people was that of a skeleton encased by little more than tightly stretched skin. The second thing one noticed was his intensely piercing eyes that spoke of deep intelligence and an unshakable devotion to duty. Only then did one realize that, except for the short gray hair of his mustache and goatee, he was completely bald and missing both eyebrows and eyelashes.

Although I’d known him for centuries, I must admit that I still found him intimidating, perhaps even a bit frightening. He was Consul Dimitri Gregorovich, head of the Order’s Intelligence Curiae and, after Consula Romano, the second-most powerful member of its High Council.

Greetings, Alessandra, he said, as he stepped in through the portal. His voice was deep, and he spoke with a strong Russian accent. After nodding to the other members of the High Council, he glanced around the room and asked, Where is Maximillian?

He’s next, Dimitri. Have a seat, and I’ll move the portal to our German facility.

Consula Romano aimed her amulet at the portal and commanded, "Portal ad partum a Norimberga!"

The portal again shimmered briefly before clearing to reveal yet another office, this time in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. Once more, a man stepped through the circle and into the room. Apparently in his mid-forties, the gray at his temples and in his stubbly, salt-and-pepper beard was the only visible signs of his great age.

Three broad reddish scars from a devil’s claws marred the right side of his otherwise handsome face, and Max had been amazingly lucky that the claws had missed his eye. He wore them proudly as badges of his bravery and service to the Order. Attacks by demons had also cost him his left forearm and given him a painful limp that forced him to walk with a thin black cane. Although hidden under his hand, I knew the cane’s silver handle was cast in the likeness of the leering head of an imp — the very same one whose sword had taken his arm and nearly cost him his life. He was Consul Maximillian Hofmeister, director of the Military Curiae of the Order and another powerful member of the High Council.

Hello, Alessa, Maximillian said with a strong German accent. His gravelly voice was as rough as the bark of an old oak tree, the result of yet another attack that left a fourth scar across his neck.

Never one to let his injuries limit him, Max took off his well-worn leather jacket to reveal the body of a gymnast, shoehorned into a tight pair of jeans and a tee shirt that did nothing to hide his heavily muscled chest and abdomen. Maximillian and I had enjoyed a brief affair during the Late Middle Ages when we were often paired together on missions in the Germanic and Nordic countries. Despite the long years since our duties had parted us, I still fondly remembered the feel of his muscular arms around me. He looked over at me and winked. Hello, Aileen. I see you’re still as beautiful as an alpine meadow when the Enzian are in bloom.

Oh, to be 500 years younger! Hello, Max, you old goat, I answered. I see you are still the same silver-tongued flatterer who used to chase me across those meadows. How are you?

Ahem. Consula Romano gave me a stern glare that instantly wiped the smile from my face.

Max wisely took his seat at the head table and remained silent.

Are you two quite finished? Consula Romano asked, frowning at me.

I nodded.

Then, let’s continue, shall we? Consula Romano said. She pointed her amulet at the portal. "Claudite porta!" The red sparks and the distant room encircled by them vanished.

Now that we’re all here, we can finally begin, Consula Romano continued as she returned to her seat. Curatrix Maxima O’Shannon, please step forward. As you can imagine, we are all interested in hearing your report. I especially wish to hear anything you might not have wanted to share with our American allies before we’d had a chance to speak privately.

I stood and took my place in front of the High Council, facing its members with my back to the others in the room.

Consula Romano fixed me with the piercing gaze of her ice-blue eyes as she said, You may begin.

I took a moment to gather my thoughts. Typically, I only submitted written mission reports. Rarely — if something sufficiently out of the ordinary happened — Consul Blakeslee, my direct superior, might have called me in to privately discuss the mission. A public debriefing such as this was practically unheard of, especially in front of multiple members of the High Council. Though I hoped I was wrong, I feared I was about to find myself neck-deep in their political machinations with more than mere demons to worry about.

Glancing briefly at each member of the High Council, I took a deep breath and began. "As you all know, last month our diviners confirmed what we’d learned from interrogating captured devils and imps. Having grown tired of minor incursions, the demons’ supreme leader had gathered a mighty army from its empire of subjugated worlds. Clearly, it was preparing to launch what it believed would be an unstoppable invasion. Like everyone else, I received orders to get ready to mount our immediate defense. Then four days ago, I received the announcement that our scryers had observed the mysterious overnight appearance of hundreds of huge holes in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle. Clearly, the invasion was imminent.

"Initially, I was unsure of what to do. Oil companies lease most of the North Slope, and they keep it strictly off-limits to private individuals. But