Hellhole: Awakening (25 page)

“Are you planning a firefight, Tiber?” Sophie asked. “Or is this just going to be a dull trip like the last time I went to Sonjeera?”

“Depends on how hungry they are. We have seventy ships, fully armed and fueled, with a skilled crew at the peak of their abilities. I’m confident we’re a match for the Constellation fleet anyway, but I plan to stay out of range. I’d rather not damage our ships or theirs—I plan to use all of them.” Feeling some pride, Adolphus considered himself a master of details, a watchmaker on a military scale. “Mr. Jordan, keep our commanders on high alert. Be prepared for anything as soon as we arrive at the end of the stringline. This needs to be a flawless operation.”

“Yes, General.” Jordan was pleased to be in a position of authority aboard the flagship, and he had been performing his duties well. The man had served for years at Elba, monitoring household security, keeping the General safe, always alert for any assassination attempts staged by Diadem Michella. Adolphus had a habit of recognizing talent, and of rewarding good, loyal people.

“Another hundred warships and five military haulers added to the Deep Zone Defense Force.” He leaned back in the command chair. “We’ll be secure at last, Sophie.”

She laughed. “We already feel secure with you in charge, Tiber.”

An hour before they were scheduled to reach the cutoff point, which the Urvanciks had marked with silent buoys, Adolphus ordered his fleet to decelerate. He experienced an awkward sense of déjà vu aboard the
Jacob
as he recalled that last intense clash above Sonjeera, eye to eye with Commodore Hallholme on a transmission screen, waiting for the other man to blink, but blinking himself.

This time it would be different.

Sophie adjusted his collar. “You need to look perfect for history, Tiber. Not a single hair out of place.”

After they had dropped below lightspeed, they disengaged from the stringline and headed into the large volume of space near where Substation 4 had been destroyed. When they wanted to find the stringline again, Adolphus would activate the line of marker buoys.

The General sat forward to study the starry field as they cruised ahead. “All weapons active. Prepare to open fire, but only on my command … and only warning shots. Let them see how many ships and weapons we have. By now they should be weak and starving.”

“They’ll also be desperate and unpredictable, like cornered rats,” Sophie pointed out.

“Make sure we keep our distance, Mr. Jordan.”

“We have to find them first, sir.”

Adolphus had prepared a speech, wording his ultimatum carefully. He would take Redcom Hallholme and all his commanding officers into custody, and neutralize the Army of the Constellation. It had to be a historic address.

Jordan extended a sensor net, searching for the five stranded stringline haulers. “We should be able to locate them in a few minutes, sir.”

“They’ll be there,” the General said. “Worst case, we may have to follow the stringline segment back to the other end where it was cut off at Substation Three. His anticipation built, and Sophie squeezed his shoulder.

But when they arrived at the cutoff point, they found no Constellation warships, nor stringline haulers, nor any sign of the fleet.

“Send a scout down the stringline segment,” Adolphus said, trying not to show his concern. “We’ll wait here. Continue the search.” His voice was rough, but he knew better than to let any doubt enter into his tone.

But the scout ship raced down the severed stringline segment and came back, finding nothing. No emergency log cylinders, no SOS markers, no indication of the Constellation fleet.

“Where the hell did they go?” Adolphus said. “Where
could
they go?”

35

Candela had no more than a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of whom lived in and around Saporo. The rest of the planet was sparsely populated, with only a few villages and mountain mining towns within aerocopter range of the harbor city. The landscape was a vibrant frontier, full of possibilities.

Due to steady rainfall year round, the hills were lushly forested, with mudslides and miserable conditions during the monsoon season. Even so, compared with more rugged DZ worlds, Candela was a paradise, and Tanja Hu did her best to manage the populace, considering them her responsibility.

Candela’s future looked much brighter now that the people were no longer forced to pay oppressive tribute to the Diadem. Tanja would much rather pay Sia Frankov’s engineers exorbitant prices for the six recommissioned warships, which had just arrived from Theser via her new direct stringline. Those six armed vessels should be sufficient to stave off any Constellation harassment, if the Diadem poked around for other weak points.

Tanja relished the prospect of telling Governor Undine about the new guardian ships, though she doubted the Diadem’s lackey would accept that the Deep Zone had won—and deserved—their independence. She accompanied Bebe Nax in an aerocopter out to the Puhau mudflat. All that remained of the once-thriving village was a bug-infested, soggy swamp—the Constellation’s fault. It was the perfect site for a squalid makeshift prison complex, and a tiny measure of the suffering Diadem Michella had caused. It would be good for Governor Undine’s soul.

Bebe had asked to bring along ten-year-old Jacque, so that he could better understand the fight for independence and why the harsh treatment of enemies was necessary. The boy needed to see the price of their freedom, she said, and Tanja agreed.

Jacque wrinkled his nose as they entered the main building. “It stinks in here.”

“A prison isn’t supposed to smell like blossoms,” Bebe said.

Tanja could not conceal her own distaste for the squalid conditions, but she was more sickened by what Undine represented. “What stinks most is how the territorial governor sided against us.”

They had attempted to interrogate the prisoner, but Undine refused to speak. Tanja doubted the former governor possessed any useful information, anyway. Marla Undine had spent most of her time in fancy offices at the Bureau of DZ Affairs on Sonjeera. A bureaucrat. It had been her misfortune to be on Theser for a regular but unnecessary inspection when the General cut off the Deep Zone.

A burly guard led them down masonry steps to a dank cell, where the foul odor was even stronger. While the corridor remained dry, brown water covered the cell floor.

“The water pools here in the low part of the prison,” the guard said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Leeches slip in with the contaminated water. Nothing we can do to keep them out.”

Undine lay on her bunk, wide-awake and haggard. Tanja looked through the heavy gray mesh around the barred cage and said with false cheer, “Good morning.”

The governor looked at them with an angry expression. Her skin was sallow, her long black hair matted, her clothes filthy. But the woman’s pride, oddly, appeared intact, manifesting itself in cool sarcasm. “Good morning, Administrator. Sorry I’m not more presentable, but you should have told me you were coming. I would have showered and asked the maid to tidy the quarters.”

Tanja had hoped to see her broken and miserable. “I brought good news. Candela just received a new force of defensive ships to protect us against the Constellation. You’ll be much safer now, without having to worry about becoming an unfortunate casualty if the Diadem’s warships should attack here.”

“The Diadem would never allow harm to come to her official representative.”

Undine swung her bare feet onto the floor and splashed through the brown water to the toilet. She pulled up her dress and sat down, as if to insult her captors. While sitting on the toilet, she yanked leeches from her legs and tossed them at Tanja, but the slippery black things bounced off the mesh and plopped back into the standing water.

When she flushed the toilet, it gurgled and back-flowed onto the floor, then made bubbling noises. She looked up at Tanja with a dark smile, resisting the dehumanizing conditions. “Let me know if you need to use my bathroom, Administrator.” Back at her bunk, Undine wiped her feet on a towel and sat with her back against the wall, propping her feet on top of the stained blanket.

The prisoner’s flippant resistance made Tanja’s anger flare. Being back at the Puhau site, where Uncle Quinn lay buried under the muck, had reopened the wounds and grief. “Do you understand what was here at one time? Good people worked frantically around the clock to meet the Diadem’s tribute demands—and the hillsides came roaring down. All because of the Constellation’s greed.”

Undine was not impressed. “Easy to blame the Crown Jewels for your poor safety procedures and incompetence. When the Constellation fleet comes to crush Candela, you’ll be held responsible.” She sat straight, summoned her pride. “I am the territorial governor, loyal to the Constellation. I demand the rights of a diplomat under law.”

“You
were
the governor. Now you’re food for leeches,” Tanja said, and a black sludge of anger rose up in her, making her want to strangle the woman, just to erase the smug expression from her face. “We’ve kept you alive. That’s as far as diplomatic courtesy goes.”

Meanwhile, Jacque stared wide-eyed, intent on the conversation.

Bebe added in a more formal tone, as if to counter the reckless edge in Tanja’s voice, “The Deep Zone no longer has any diplomatic ties or agreements with the Constellation, Governor. Eventually, we may work out terms for your return to Sonjeera, but I wouldn’t count on that any time soon.”

“Make yourself comfortable here,” Tanja said. “And think about all the corpses buried in the mud beneath you.” She drew a deep breath and hardened her voice further. “A Constellation spy, however, is another matter. We caught a man trying to take images of classified operations. Fortunately, we apprehended him before he could slip any of his information back to Sonjeera.”

Undine’s sarcasm vanished. “What happened to him?”

Tanja smiled and looked at Bebe’s adopted son as she spoke. “This is war. His actions could have caused the deaths of millions of people, maybe even the collapse of our Deep Zone alliance. We sent him up to the stringline terminus in orbit, as he wanted … then we ejected him from the airlock.” She shrugged. “I hope his frozen body doesn’t become a navigational hazard. Or maybe he burned up in the atmosphere like a meteor.”

Governor Undine said, “You’re all barbarians.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Tanja turned to leave. “It means you’ve been paying attention.”

36

As Lord Riomini’s strike force approached Theser, he put on a gold lapel pin with the shield insignia of the Riomini family. Ready to command the retaliation, he recalled his glory days during the first rebellion, how he had assembled the Army of the Constellation against General Adolphus. Those had been heady times! Since then, the Diadem’s fleet had become bloated and without purpose, but he was beginning to feel the old energy again.

Even in those days, Riomini had never personally drawn blood, never killed anyone in close combat. From his desk, he had ordered bloody attacks, executions, and assassinations, but that had been like a business operation. As he stood there in his formal black uniform, he had watched his enemies die before him, seen their eyes go blank. He was familiar with death, but he liked to keep himself at a comfortable distance.

Now Riomini was leading the largest mission he had ever attempted personally: twenty-three advanced warships loaded aboard two large haulers heading out to the Deep Zone. General Adolphus had cut his own stringline, denying Redcom Hallholme’s fleet a way home, but Hellhole was by no means safe. Nor were the other rebel frontier worlds; the Black Lord would prove that at Theser.

As planned, the military haulers arrived at the stringline terminus over Theser and disengaged from the iperion path. All his warships dropped from their docking clamps and fell into attack formation, just like the many drills they had practiced.

Riomini addressed his captains over the codecall system. “Strike fast, strike hard!” It had become a favorite saying of his, an effective war slogan, and he had ordered his propaganda wing to disseminate it throughout the Constellation.

In this punitive onslaught, the fighters knew there would be no prisoners taken, no negotiations, no surrender—only shock and terror, no time or opportunity to flee. Theser was already a dead world, although the population did not yet realize it.

“As you command, my Lord,” said his operations officer beside him on the command bridge. Lucinda Ekova had too many moles and red splotches on her skin to be attractive, and her body was solid rather than shapely, but she had an excellent mind that was capable of rapid assessment. Riomini trusted her military judgment.

Other officers stood at their consoles, monitoring the warships as they descended like valkyries toward the heavily cratered surface. He heard the steady buzz of low, competent conversation, saw the interplay of multicolored diagnostics, smelled the excitement in the air.

“First off, dispatch four ships to capture the stringline terminus to the DZ network,” he said. “I want it intact so we can move on to planet Hallholme.”

Once he dealt with Theser, his soldiers would be even more enthusiastic, having tasted blood. He would send a report back to Sonjeera—as Redcom Hallholme should have done—and then he would take his assault fleet on the General’s own stringline.

First things first, though. Followed by the other warcraft, the flagship dipped and accelerated down toward the crater city of Eron. No need to hide, no requirement to give a warning. There were no rules. Riomini planned to bring the images back to the Crown Jewels for wide play across the newsnets, and everyone would see his prowess, patriotism, and worthiness to be the next Diadem. The blood and bones of the Theser rebels would buy him the Star Throne.

Eron came into view, distorted by the thermal bow shock of heated air from their descent. The attack force arrived so unexpectedly that Administrator Frankov could not even contact her defenses. As the city dwellings, administration buildings, and industrial facilities came into range, Riomini ordered his warships to dispatch incendiary bombs that would turn the densely populated crater bowl into a furnace.