Hellhole (14 page)

“And therefore we should continue to watch him,” noted the Diadem, who waved a hand to dismiss him. “Thank you, Mr Heer.” She drew a deep breath to face a tedious and unpleasant task. “Next on the agenda, we shall continue the debate on the Paternos matter and the disposition of planet Kappas.”

No longer needed as Constellation politics swirled around and past him, Ishop departed from the chamber, and Laderna trotted up beside him. She whispered with great fervor, “Good job, Ishop!” She touched his arm affectionately, and he gave her hand a fond pat, but he was annoyed that the nobles had not seen the threat Adolphus continued to pose. His mind progressed to other schemes.

That evening, the Diadem summoned Ishop for a private debriefing, and he described his time with the General in greater detail. He didn’t believe for a minute that General Adolphus was a beaten, cooperative man, but the off-books mining operations really posed no significant threat to the Constellation. It was frustrating.

Normally, Michella would have been angry to hear how she had been cheated, but she was distracted by the brewing feud involving the Tazaars and Paternos. The Diadem shook her head. “I don’t know why they bother. Kappas isn’t even much of a planet, and certainly not very profitable. But because the Paternos refuse to surrender it, that makes the Tazaars want it even more.”

“Indeed, it doesn’t seem worth fighting for, Eminence . . . therefore, there must be another reason. Something personal.”

Michella smiled. “Perceptive, as usual, Ishop. Yes, years ago, the Paternos cast a deciding vote against the Tazaars on some matter. I’ve forgotten the details . . . and so have all the other members of the Council, except for Lord Tazaar, of course. Grudges last a long time.”

“There are always currents flowing beneath the surface – and predatory fish swimming there.”

“Yes, and you are one of my defenses against them. The trick, Ishop, is for me to keep you pointed in the right direction, so that you never turn against me.”

“I would never do that, Eminence!” He was sure he sounded convincing.

“I believe you, Ishop. After all, you are like the son I never had.”

The sincerity in her voice was touching, but he could not let himself forget that she had murdered her own young brother and locked away her only sister. Michella’s husband had died before Keana’s first birthday, though Ishop hadn’t found any reasons to suspect her of involvement in that. The man’s death seemed to be an accident, pure and simple.

Like the son I never had
. All things considered, Ishop wondered how safe it was to be part of the Diadem’s close family . . .

I
t was the sixteenth anniversary of the battle of Qiorfu, the official start of his rebellion against the Constellation, and General Adolphus knew none of his surviving men would ever forget it. Back in Michella Town, drinking establishments would be crowded with old soldiers reminiscing about the lost war.

Instead of leading his men in a moment of silence for fallen comrades, Adolphus made a habit each year of spending this night alone. He wanted nothing to do with somber parades or maudlin reminiscences. Someday – when the wounds stopped hurting, when Hallholme was free and civilized and the people had their own government to be proud of – he might institute a national holiday to mark what had actually happened.

But not yet.

Always attuned to his moods, Sophie had watched his sadness increase for days. She knew what this date meant for the General, his close friends, and his failed hopes. She touched his arm, asking softly, “Are you sure you don’t want me there with you?”

“Not for this. Not tonight.”

Before she returned to her own residence in town, she left him a bottle of her best wine. He accepted the bottle, kissed her goodbye, and then sent his staff away. Alone in his study, Adolphus removed the cork and poured a glass of the rich Cabernet, letting it breathe as he sat back and stared into his memories.

The Adolphus family had once been important nobles on the Crown Jewel planet Qiorfu, whose prominence and wealth had declined over the generations. The Lubis Plain shipyards were the planet’s largest source of income – a dumping ground where damaged or decommissioned ships from the Constellation space navy were fixed, stored, or dismantled for scrap and parts.

A century earlier, the Adolphus family had subcontracted the Lubis Plain operations to the Riomini family, which was like letting a hungry predator into a livestock pen. The ambitious Riominis had consolidated and expanded the base of operations, becoming the primary employers on Qiorfu.

Tiber Adolphus was the second son of Jacob, an old respected patriarch who liked to tend his olive groves on the grassy hills that overlooked the bustling industrial expanse of Lubis Plain. Stefano, the older son, was the natural heir, but Jacob planned to split the Adolphus holdings between his two children, as many noble families had done for generations. Their mother was a quiet woman who spent most of her time in a studio in the manor house, writing poetry thousands of lines long, which she never allowed anyone to read; she spent very little time with her boys.

Stefano, though, picked at the division of the territory, trying to mince up and draw lines around structures and plots of land that were of particular interest to him, pressuring their father to shift the boundaries in a complex gerrymandered map. Tiber became frustrated with his brother’s pettiness: whenever he made concessions, Stefano found something else to object to. The quarrel degenerated until Tiber concluded that his brother would never be satisfied.

Seeing how distraught the conflict was making their old father, Tiber decided to relinquish all interest in the property. Subdividing their Qiorfu holdings would only weaken the Adolphus family, so he signed over his entire inheritance to Stefano. Tiber supplied a legal document forsaking his claim to the family wealth and signed up for service in the Constellation military. It was traditional for planetary rulers to get rid of their “extra inheritors” by enrolling them in officer training to start them on military careers.

There, Tiber found himself surrounded by numerous second, third, and fourth sons of waning noble families; he and his fellows jokingly called themselves the “second-string nobles.” The ever-increasing surplus of high-level personnel had bloated the space navy. Due to special-interest lobbying, the Constellation had constructed hundreds of unnecessary FTL starships for its military and created countless irrelevant positions and an attendant bureaucracy. It became a thriving, noxious weed that no one could uproot.

Tiber scored well in the intense training at the military academy. After growing up near the Lubis Plain shipyards, he was already familiar with most ship configurations and knew many soldiers personally. An intelligent and talented man with a keen eye for tactics, he quickly began to make his mark and received numerous increases in rank.

Then he received word that Stefano had died on Qiorfu from an allergic reaction to medicine. Suddenly Tiber was the sole heir to the Adolphus family fortunes, and though he was a rising star in the military with a clear promotion path, he resigned his commission, bade farewell to his comrades, and rushed back to Qiorfu to take up his new responsibilities and comfort his devastated father. His mother had retreated even further into her poetry.

Once back home, though, he learned the insidious subtleties of Constellation law. Over the years, ambitious noble families – the Riominis, Tazaars, Craises, and Hirdans – had passed seemingly innocuous legislation that prevented a noble son from reclaiming his inheritance once he had relinquished it. Tiber was told there was nothing he could do.

But he knew his cause was just, so he fought, this time via the judicial system. Tiber pleaded his case before the Supreme Magistrate on Sonjeera, and was appalled when the court dismissed it. “The law is clear, young man. Accept it.”

Using new attorneys, Adolphus appealed and lost again. He then took his case to the public, but engendered little sympathy; the other nobles brushed it aside, for his family had minimal influence, and the common people didn’t care about the inflated problems of the nobility. The Riominis administered the Lubis Plain shipyards with exceptional efficiency, and the Black Lord had a very powerful propaganda machine.

Back home, old Jacob Adolphus was weary, broken by the loss not only of his eldest son, but the loss of his family wealth and prestige. His mother’s hair had gone very gray, and she ate dinner with them, but rarely said a word. With no other prospects, Tiber left home again and reapplied for military service, but because of his absence and because he had shown himself to be a “troublemaker,” he entered two steps below the rank he had held before.

Since the Constellation navy had so many spaceships and so little to do, many vessels were given busy-work assignments, usually involving scientific matters that would not otherwise have been funded. Tiber found himself running a small long-range FTL scoutship with a crew of seventy. Built for espionage and reconnaissance, it was now assigned to astronomy duty. They were dispatched with orders to study a well-cataloged and predictable nova that was due to flare up. Adolphus’s ship would be there to observe the event.

As a student of military history and tactics, Tiber had a passing interest in astronomy and he was pleased to be in command of even a small vessel. The Constellation military gave them a precise time and location for the predicted nova, which puzzled him: if the astronomy was so well understood, why send a survey ship and crew to observe the event?

His first officer was Franck Tello, the second son of a weak noble family, who had turned to the Constellation military like so many other second-string nobles. Tello was a good-natured young man who loved his family and understood his position, missed his home planet of Cherby but accepted the fact that he would have to go wherever he was sent.

Once Tiber and his crew got to know one another better, he realized that his entire ship was filled with surplus family members from the weakest noble families; every single crewman was a second or third son of an already dissipated family – someone who cluttered the inheritance chain.

The scout ship took up its position very close to the binary star, dispatched their detectors, and prepared to wait. The two tightly orbiting stars danced around each other, the blue dwarf siphoning star gases from the red giant until enough new material built up to trigger a collapse with a resulting flash of light and radiation. The nova would happen soon.

Always curious, Tiber studied the unstable system, read reports of previous nova outbursts, and compiled the data. With actual stars in front of him, rather than theoretical descriptions from his astrophysics lessons, he ran the calculations himself, as an exercise.

And found that the Constellation scientists had provided erroneous information.

It was a basic mistake, and he rechecked his calculations. He brought in Franck, who came up with the same answer. Adolphus reread his orders, dispatched a question to military headquarters, and received confirmation that yes, his ship was supposed to be in that precise position on that particular date. He was reprimanded for questioning orders.

The only problem was, when the nova exploded, their location would be squarely in the death zone. Gathering redundant astronomical data should not be a suicide mission. Though loath to disobey a direct command, especially after receiving confirmation from his superiors, he did not intend to let his ship and crew be wiped out because some careless scientist had made a mathematical error.

A more terrifying thought occurred to him: what if this was not a mistake, after all?

Franck was the first to suggest a possible conspiracy. “Captain, many of us aboard this vessel happen to be inconvenient members of noble families, and not all have renounced their inheritances, as I did. Wouldn’t some powerful lords consider it
fortuitous
if this ship and crew were accidentally lost?”

Adolphus was astounded. His instinct was to disbelieve his first officer, to argue with the very idea of something so dishonorable, but then he remembered how the Supreme Magistrate had so brusquely swept aside his inheritance claims, no doubt because the Riominis wanted all of Qiorfu, not just the shipyards. If he himself were killed in an unfortunate accident during a survey mission, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to help his father hold onto the family estate.

In his heart Adolphus knew that Franck Tello was right.

He left a survey buoy with full scientific instrumentation in place and withdrew the scout ship to a safe distance. Though he was technically disobeying orders, the astronomical data would be gathered as requested.

When the star flared up exactly according to their captain’s calculations and vaporized the survey buoy – where their ship should have been – the second-string nobles were convinced that they had been ordered to their deaths. The Constellation was trying to eliminate them!

Maintaining communications silence, an outraged Adolphus issued orders to his crew, and the FTL scout ship raced to nearby Cherby, Franck Tello’s home planet. The voyage took two weeks, and they arrived at the planet without announcing themselves, only to discover that all of the Tello family holdings had been taken over by their arch-rivals, the Hirdans. Franck’s older brother had been killed in a “hunting mishap,” and his father chased out of the house, griefstricken by the erroneous news that Franck was dead as well. The new landlords already occupied the family’s great house.