Hellhole (18 page)

Not so long ago, she had wanted to marry him with all her heart; she had begged her parents to allow the wedding, and was devastated when they’d told her to wait. Now, she agreed out of desperation; they were already tied together by their hearts as well as circumstances. This was not a fairy-tale romance at all, yet Jako seemed to find it delightful. At first, she thought he was just being brave, making the best of their ragged situation. But he really did want it that way.

Their first lovemaking was clumsy, unsatisfying, and rushed – as it was so many times over the next two years, with Jako snatching a moment when he thought they might be safe. Antonia never shook off the sensation that she might be in the targeting scope of a hunter’s weapon. Passion and edgy fear became inseparably linked in her mind.

They survived like that, constantly moving to elude detection, eking out a living from job to job to job. He taught her how to change her identity, how to dye her hair and cut it herself. Every time she tried to make friends, or became attached to a particular employer or place, Jako whisked her away, whispering urgently that Riomini hunters had found them again.

For Antonia it was a long, incredible nightmare, but Jako seemed to find the idea romantic: running away together and having her depend only on him.

One day she discovered to her horror that it was all a lie. Accidentally, while viewing some news coverage of unsolved crimes, she saw his image and learned that Jako wasn’t a Riomini heir after all, and that hunters were after them, but not of the type she’d thought. Worst of all, she learned that
he
was the one who had hired killers to eliminate her parents just so he could set up this elaborate ruse. One of the contract assassins had been caught and had confessed everything.

During their time on the run, Jako had made certain she had no ties to keep her connected to home; he had stripped away all hope so that she would believe his preposterous story. Antonia also realized that if she confronted him with the knowledge, he would get violent, perhaps even kill her. Once she discovered the truth, she had to keep him from finding out that she knew.

By then, Jako had taught Antonia to be wary, never to trust anyone, and in the process he had unwittingly taught her how to spot the telltale signs of deception in himself. She came to understand how possessive he was, that his convoluted plot had built a cage designed to keep her with him and only him.

She bided her time for weeks until she saw her opportunity. She cut her hair again, dyed it a different color, and hurried to the Aeroc spaceport and colonization office. After forging the proper agreements and offering a new set of ID that she had obtained without Jako’s knowledge, she boarded the next departing ship.

And now, on Hellhole, maybe she was at last safe . . .

Antonia glanced up when she heard excited chatter from other workers tending the hydroponic gardens. They were pointing to the top of the hemisphere overhead. Through the transparent crystal plates, she watched glowing blue spheres of diaphanous energy bounce from point to point on the metal support gridwork.

“A kind of St Elmo’s Fire,” Devon explained, trying to be nonchalant. “Happens all the time.”

The blue static whorls furled and bounced. Some of them collided with a shower of sparks and vanished into the air. Other fairy lights continued dancing around the dome’s apex.

She looked at Devon, thinking about his idealistic curiosity concerning the Crown Jewel planets. “What you have here may not be glamorous, Devon, but be content. There’s a dark side to excitement and adventure.”

T
hough it was the territorial capital of eleven Deep Zone colonies, Ridgetop was required to pay tribute to the Constellation just like any other world. Governor Carlson Goler had to encourage the production of useful items from all the planets he supervised under authority from the Diadem. It was his job, though he did not relish it.

The fledgling DZ settlements struggled to stand on their own feet, even though they still received regular supply shipments from the Crown Jewels. The colonists planted crops to feed
themselves
, established mining and fabrication industries to meet
their own
urgent needs and support
their own
people. They didn’t have surplus resources or luxury items to please the Constellation’s noble families.

On each of his eleven planets, Territorial Governor Goler had to act as if the Diadem’s priorities were more important than the colonists’. No wonder the individual planetary administrators didn’t like him. How could he sound credible when he didn’t necessarily agree with the idea himself? He had done his best, trying to soften the blow from the Constellation behemoth, even though he could never deflect it. And he had to be careful so that his efforts weren’t obvious, which meant the people didn’t realize how hard he was trying.

Goler sighed . . . then sneezed. The pollens in Ridgetop’s air often irritated him. He was a lanky, dark-skinned man with a quiet voice and a soft demeanor. Many of his fellow territorial governors considered him innocuous; others simply found him invisible.

With the next stringline hauler due to arrive in three days, Ridgetop’s required tribute had to be prepped. Goler went out to the steep hillsides to watch heavy machinery clear another swath of spindly but beautiful goldenwood trees. Dirt roads had been carved onto the steep slopes, zigzagging through razed areas where overworked loggers clearcut the tall forest, leaving only stumps and trampled, weedy vegetation.

Because the goldenwood groves were so gorgeous and serene, such hillside scars offended Goler’s sensibilities, but the logging was necessary; he knew of no other way to meet the tribute. Fortunately, after being severely shocked by cutting, the trees’ root systems responded with an outburst of growth and would cover the hillsides again in a decade.

Goldenwood lumber shimmered in the sunlight like veins of precious metal, making it a much prized building material. Once processed, the boards were packed into reinforced upboxes and launched into orbit, where they would be retrieved by the stringline hauler, and rushed to Sonjeera for distribution.

Down in the cutting zone, humming lifters grasped smooth trunks, while trimmers sliced off feathery leaf clusters that looked like strips of metal foil. Scooping up armfuls of sheared-off leaves, male and female lumber workers packed them in crates. In a flash of inspiration, Goler had actually convinced the Constellation that goldenwood leaves were valuable and could be processed into exotic materials and coatings, and they had become moderately popular among nobles on the Crown Jewel world. By contrast, no one on Ridgetop saw much use in the leaves, but the settlers were happy to include them as part of the tribute to the Diadem. It eased their burden a little bit.

For eleven years now, Michella had been content enough with Goler’s leadership. When he was first assigned to this DZ planet, she told him that his utmost priority was to see that the new colonists caused no trouble. “Ridgetop has already given me enough difficulties, Mr Goler. Let’s not do that again.”

Before his arrival, the Army of the Constellation had razed an old squatter colony and replaced all the unauthorized settlers with her own people. Over the years, under Goler’s administration, Ridgetop had become a model frontier colony.

The numerous habitable planets in the Deep Zone had been known for centuries, peripherally mapped by probes and intrepid long-range explorers. But without any established stringline connections, those worlds were considered too distant and inconvenient to be worth a major settlement effort. The only way to reach them had been via old-style FTL transport, which required voyages that lasted months or years.

Back then, the DZ planets attracted only the hardiest and most desperate colonists. Few were willing to leave the comforts of Crown Jewel civilization to risk the long and expensive voyage, unless they had nothing to lose. Anyone who decided to colonize those enigmatic worlds knew it would be a one-way trip, since old FTL ships had insufficient fuel for the return voyage and had no spacedock or manufacturing facilities on the other end. They were pioneers going off into the unknown.

The newly extended stringline network changed all that. By dispatching her trailblazer vessels to lay down iperion paths to the frontier planets, Diadem Michella suddenly had fifty-four new worlds under her control. With her blessing, she invited ambitious people from the crowded Crown Jewels to go and make a new start.

Not surprisingly, the original squatters who had ventured out to claim virgin territory years earlier were not pleased with the sudden influx of outsiders. They had left the Constellation behind long ago and had been surviving without help or interference from the old government. When Michella annexed the entire Deep Zone and subsequently imposed tariffs and taxes, the independents resisted violently. The Diadem was forced to dispatch her military to squash several uprisings, including one on Ridgetop before she brought in Carlson Goler to clean up the mess and start afresh.

Even though he was Territorial Governor out here, the powerful noble families back in the Crown Jewels considered him little more than a trumped-up civil servant. But Goler did his work and paid attention to the way the wind was blowing. He had always been a realistic man, yet he had already achieved much more than he’d expected. Though fulfilling the Diadem’s regular tribute was a persistent thorn in his side, Goler chose not to rock the boat. The people understood that.

He had been a career government worker on Sonjeera, with no hope of advancing himself, until his name came up for the Ridgegtop assignment because of his past loyal but unremarkable service. Out in the Deep Zone, though, he had his chance. He considered it an honor to be here in an important job, and he maintained his primary residence on Ridgetop.

His fellow territorial governors didn’t hold the same view. They had their homes and offices on Sonjeera, working out of the Bureau of Deep Zone affairs – an opulent new building that had been under construction for four years on the edge of Council City. Even though the other governors maintained nominal offices in the Deep Zone, most were loath to leave the opulence and comforts of the Crown Jewels.

Goler actually liked living on Ridgetop. He had grown rather fond of the place, though the other governors rolled their eyes, considering him backward. They argued that it was impractical for a territorial governor to live anywhere other than Sonjeera – why bother with all that extra travel, they asked him, to ride the stringline from Ridgetop back to the Constellation’s main hub, then back out to one of the other worlds under his jurisdiction?

The fact was, he didn’t much like Sonjeera. Goler preferred his hillside home among the goldenwood groves.

However, the colonists here still regarded him as the Diadem’s man. No matter how he tried to soften the blow, he was still required to impose obedience and collect the tribute payments.

Now, out in the lumber processing yards, he signed off on four sealed upboxes, smiled and thanked the workers. As the ground crew prepared the boxes’ internal engines for ascent to orbit, one red-faced man wiped sweat from his eyes and let out a disgusted sigh. “Governor, can’t you tell the Diadem that these trees are worth a hell of a lot more than she gives us credit for? Pad out the tribute a little so we have some breathing room?”

Goler shook his head, then sneezed again. “I wish I could, but her inspectors watch everything with hawk eyes. Breathe easy, though – I am confident the market price of goldenwood will continue to go up.”

“Why is that?” The logger did not sound convinced.

“Because I happen to know the Diadem is building a new lake house out of goldenwood, and after the nobles see it, they’ll all want to imitate it. When the demand increases even more because of that, we can charge them through the nose.”

The other man grumbled. “I’d like to spend less of my day working for Her Eminence and more of it with my own family.”

“You’re doing a fine job.” There wasn’t much else Goler could say. “Let’s get these shipments ready. After the stringline hauler leaves, you’ll have weeks to take care of your own needs.”

Finished with his inspection, Goler returned to his peaceful open-architecture home on the hillside. He had other work to do this afternoon, documents to check, regular reports from the administrators of the other planets he supervised, but he doubted there would be anything crucial. Goler’s underlings considered him a bland and unremarkable leader, but he knew things the others didn’t, a secret about Ridgetop that continued to gnaw at him . . .

He had designed the A-frame house with large window-walls for the spacious views. The treated goldenwood lumber that comprised the walls, floors, and rafters might be worth a fortune elsewhere, but on Ridgetop,
every
house was built of the substance.

The outside air held so much fluffy pollen that Goler’s eyes and nose burned. He sneezed repeatedly after he came through the door. Seeing him back home, his old household servant, Tasmine, brought him a pitcher of iced herbal tea. “I sprinkled dried priniflower in the brew. That’ll stop the inflammation and sneezing.”

He sipped it gratefully, knowing it would take effect quickly. “Thank you, Tasmine. You work miracles.” The aged woman knew more about Ridgetop’s indigenous plants and their medicinal properties than any other person – but then, she had been here much longer than anyone else. “We should catalog and patent your herbal remedies, Tasmine.”

She sniffed. “My knowledge is my own. I choose to share it with you, but anyone else from the Constellation can suffer and die for all I care.”

Her comment did not surprise him. “We’ve got our own biologists, and the pharmaceutical hunters search for anything worthwhile they can bring back to Sonjeera. They may discover some local remedies without your help.” A rare and potent drug would certainly help him pay the regular tribute.

Tasmine huffed. “They have their gadgets, but they have no common sense, nor experience. It’ll take them longer than you think, Governor.”