Hellhole: Awakening (3 page)

The best idea, Turlo decided, was to avoid getting caught in the first place.

Once the
Kerris
was off the stringline, Turlo activated the spacedrive, nudging them toward Sonjeera. He merged into the flow of traffic converging on the planet. They already had a fake ID beacon, which identified the
Kerris
as nothing more than a small cargo distributor. Nothing of interest to the authorities.

Sonjeera’s orbit was crowded with transfer stations and holding matrices for cargo boxes. Some trade items and raw materials were delivered via downboxes to Sonjeeran markets, but the majority were shuffled aboard other stringline haulers to be delivered throughout the Crown Jewel worlds.

Because all Constellation travel and commerce had to go through the bottleneck, the orbiting complex was enormous. Even with the Deep Zone lines now embargoed, the hub was a hornet’s nest of confusion. The disorder worked to Turlo’s advantage as he received clearance and an assigned dock from a crisp, impatient-sounding woman. “We may as well use our last Constellation credits,” Turlo said. “I want to pick up a case of Sonjeeran brandy. We can sell it at a premium to the DZ planetary administrators.”

Sunitha raised her thin eyebrows. “Oh, so now you’re a black-market trader?”

“It’s more festive to have them toast their independence with something other than Sophie Vence’s wine.”

Turlo and Sunitha found the crowded observation bar where they were supposed to meet their contact. Panoramic windowports showed sparkling Sonjeera below, and they watched the passenger pods and downboxes drop from orbit, and stringline haulers hurtling in on the Crown Jewel lines. Watching the time, feigning nonchalance, growing nervous. When their contact was late by ten minutes, Sunitha began to perspire; she drank two servings of hot, sweet kiafa, which only made her more jittery. Turlo pretended to be aloof, despite the knot in his stomach.

A thin man with short brown hair and protruding ears sat beside them, startling Sunitha. He said in a low, conversational voice, “Been watching you. Had to make sure.”

“We’re who you think we are,” Turlo said.

“Depends on
who
you think we are,” Sunitha added, flashing her eyes at her husband.

Toying with crumbs and drops of liquid on the tabletop, the stranger drew a casual script DZ, a symbol of Adolphus’s rebellion, then swept it away with the side of his hand. He leaned closer. “The General still has loyalists here, even one or two planetary leaders in the Crown Jewels. Not everybody accepts what the Diadem is doing. Tiber Adolphus isn’t the only one thinking of rebellion.”

The spy, Dak Telom, was a midlevel officer of the Army of the Constellation who had access to supply records and ship movements. “I came in from Aeroc yesterday. The fleet is still being readied and loaded, but they’ll be launching soon. They’ll converge here at the Sonjeera hub, then set off for planet Hallholme. I have the specific details—total number of ships, weapons capabilities, crew complements—and of critical importance, their exact departure time and transit information.”

Turlo smiled; he could feel his pulse racing. “That’s what the General needs.”

“That’s
everything
the General needs,” Telom said. “He’d better make the most of it. We’ve all got a lot riding on him.”

“Yes,” Sunitha said. “We do.”

Dak Telom removed a foilpaper packet of nuts from his pocket, carefully tore it open, and dumped the nuts into his palm. He gobbled them in a single bite and tossed the empty wrapper on the table in front of Turlo. “Take that with you.” Turlo looked around for a recycler receptacle, but the spy put a hand on his wrist. He whispered, “Molecular imprinting on the inner liner. The General will know how to decode it. Use that data to keep the Deep Zone safe.”

Dak Telom finished his kiafa in a single gulp and left without another word while Turlo pocketed the wrapper.

4

Although desolate Hellhole was considered the worst Deep Zone world, Tanja Hu could see that frozen Buktu was no prize either. The remote planetoid had only a gossamer-thin unbreathable atmosphere, showered by a heavy sleet of solar radiation.

All things considered, she much preferred her own lush, tropical Candela.

Nevertheless, Ian Walfor and two hundred hardy colonists had made the best of things on Buktu, even though the small world turned out to be far different from what the original probe data suggested. They had built their colony under difficult conditions and not only survived but thrived. That was what resourceful pioneers did. Deep Zone people,
independent
sorts who did not need the choke collar of the Constellation.

Every time Tanja thought of the corrupt central government and the machinations of the bitch Michella, she wanted to hurt something. Thanks to the General, the frontier worlds had finally broken free, and Tanja took great satisfaction in that. Now, if only they could hold on to their independence.

Ian Walfor’s ships from the industrial yards and spacedocks on Buktu would help ensure that.

Down in the Buktu operations center, Tanja met with Walfor inside a smooth ice grotto, where a porthole field presented the black starry sky and the pocked ice field. He sidled close to her. “I brought you here for the view.”

“I can get a view anywhere.” She looked at him stiffly. “You brought me here to help deliver ships to General Adolphus—and also because I’m the only one who can negotiate for the stardrive engines you need.”

Walfor gave her a roguish grin. “True, you can pull strings with Administrator Frankov on Theser, but my reasons don’t have to be all business.”

Tanja had long, inky black hair, high cheekbones, and large eyes. For several years, she had enjoyed (and diverted) Walfor’s flirtations. He was an attractive man in his own way, with a weathered face and wavy black hair, and she did enjoy his company. One day she might accept his advances—when the Deep Zone was free and safe, and she could turn her attentions to romance. For now, her duty to the rebellion, and to Candela, consumed her.

She had been hardened by many difficulties and tragedies, most of which she blamed on Constellation corruption and on the Diadem herself. It was a barbaric fantasy, but she often imagined the withered head of evil Michella Duchenet thrust onto a stake;
then
Tanja could relax.

Seeing her expression darken, Walfor said, “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”

She drew her brows together. “Then these days I must be beautiful all the time.”

He let out an exaggerated sigh. “We’re all in this together. I don’t know why Frankov’s engineers refuse to leave Theser. They’re like conceited lordlings forcing everyone to come to their court. How can they refuse to travel? Don’t they trust their own stardrives?”

Tanja was also annoyed at the inconvenience, especially during a war. The brilliant Theser engineers supplied vital components, but no amount of coaxing would budge them from their laboratories inside the crater walls on Theser. Through her friendship with Sia Frankov, the planetary administrator, Tanja had arranged to get the shipments herself. She straightened, keeping her mind on the goal. “That’s a difficulty we can overcome,” she said. “In fact, it’s not even much of an inconvenience, now that the new Candela-Theser route is established. Trust me, it would take longer to argue with them, and we still wouldn’t succeed. Leave it to me—I can round up stardrive engines for your scrap heaps.”

“
Defense ships,
” he corrected. “They need to be functional, not pretty. And we’ve got plenty of hulks here that nobody ever noticed.”

Of all the Deep Zone planets, Buktu was the farthest from Sonjeera. Years ago, the original pioneers had made the long journey from the Crown Jewel worlds, theoretically a one-way trip to a comfortable new home, where they would be far from the Constellation.

Unfortunately, the long-distance remote surveys of Buktu gave falsely positive images, and, after two years in transit, the colonists found only an ice-covered planetoid with virtually no ecosystem. Without enough fuel to return to civilization, they were stuck there. Though hardly a garden spot, the planetoid did have resources, and the determined colonists tunneled outposts into the thick ice, excavating cozy chambers where people could live. The large ice sheets were saturated with numerous exotic isotopes that could be harvested and used for FTL stardrive fuel, long-term energy sources, and containment-field systems.

Meanwhile, back on Sonjeera, the Diadem had set her sights on the many untouched planets in the Deep Zone, sending out trailblazer ships to open stringline trade routes, and to annex the worlds that assumed themselves to be independent. Also tricked by the rosy measurements from the original probe, Michella dispatched a Constellation trailblazer to Buktu. She was deeply disappointed by what she found.

When the unexpected stringline ship arrived at Buktu, reestablishing contact, the colonists were surprised and disappointed as well. They had not wanted any further contact with, nor obligations to, the old government.

After an uneasy nine years, however, not to mention great expense from the Constellation, the Diadem finally declared the Buktu route “not commercially viable.” She abandoned the stringline path, announced that the Buktu colony was defunct, and commanded Ian Walfor and his people to return to Sonjeera so they could be relocated to a more hospitable place.

But the Buktu colonists refused, unanimously, and stayed where they were, even cut off from civilization. Incensed that Walfor and his people would snub her benevolent gesture, the Diadem washed her hands of these subjects—which was what they had wanted anyway. The abandoned iperion path was left to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, Walfor turned the resources of Buktu to his own advantage, using the saturated ices of his planetoid to create stardrive fuel, and his engineers built repair and reconstruction facilities for the numerous abandoned one-way ships out in the Deep Zone.

Michella didn’t realize it, but the Buktu colonists had done very well for themselves indeed.

Even Tanja was surprised by just how successful the colony was. She stared through the porthole field and admired the operations. Outside on the glacier fields, large equipment trundled along the rough surface, chewing the top layer of frozen water and gases. Melters scraped off the ice and processed it into useful fuels. Bulbous tanks stored the residual fuel and stockpiles of valuable chemicals for transfer to the General’s war effort.

“I’m impressed,” she admitted, nodding to him. “Your operation is going to be the key to Deep Zone independence.”

“That has always been my goal,” Walfor said with a warm smile. “To impress you, I mean.”

Tanja focused her gaze on the new fleet, all the ships salvaged from old abandoned vessels. Smaller ones landed on the frozen spaceport yard, and others circled above the planetoid, seventy-five in all. “Are they ready to launch for Hellhole? The General is waiting.”

“One more day of shakedowns. Some weren’t in the best condition when they arrived.”

For years, Walfor’s people had acquired old colony ships from across the Deep Zone. Tanja admired how Walfor had seen an opportunity. He had taken those old ships, made them spaceworthy again, and operated his own black-market fleet completely independent of the Constellation. He refused to be beholden to the Diadem’s government.

“I’ll ride with them on the stringline to the Hellhole hub,” Tanja said. She liked to be hands-on, not an administrator who never left the office. Her uncle Quinn had been adamant about that. Quinn had taught her many things, made her who she was … but the man had been buried under incalculable tons of mud washed down in a monsoon.

Tanja considered Diadem Michella to be responsible for that tragedy as well. She felt a hollowness in her heart as she thought of how workers on Candela had been forced to strip-mine the unstable hills, cutting corners, working themselves to exhaustion in order to achieve the payment the Constellation demanded.

No, she felt no regret that the Crown Jewels were falling apart.

She shook the dark thoughts aside. “These new ships will greatly expand the General’s defenses. I want to see his face when we come to the rescue.”

“
Before
the Constellation fleet arrives, I hope.” Walfor snorted. “You don’t want to be there when the shots start flying.”

“If I could fire shots at the bastards myself, I’d be happy to. Better still if the old bitch is aboard, but she’ll never go far from her comfortable palace.” Tanja’s nostrils flared, and again she drew a deep breath to calm herself. The air inside the Buktu cave chamber seemed chilly and dry. “If I had the chance to wring the Diadem’s neck, I’d do it. She deserves it a thousand times over.”

As the planetary leader of Candela, Tanja saw too often how the decadent Crown Jewels preyed upon the fledgling Deep Zone worlds, how Michella demanded oppressive payments that nearly bankrupted the colonies, even though they had never wanted to be part of the Constellation.

For years the nobles had paid little attention to the DZ, interested only in their tribute. They didn’t think the frontier worlds would produce anything of particular note, but thanks to the hard work of the settlers, the Deep Zone was on the verge of thriving. Tanja’s engineers had discovered an extremely rich vein of iperion in the hills of Candela, a source of the stringline marker-material that was far more extensive than the played-out iperion mines on Vielinger. No one in the Constellation knew anything about the discovery, and Tanja had no intention of simply handing over the wealth.

Not when the DZ colonists could use it for themselves.

As she watched, two of Walfor’s finished ships lifted off the frozen spaceport plain to join seven others already waiting at the newly established stringline terminus over Buktu. Tanja mused, “Hellhole isn’t the only planet that needs to be guarded. I’d like a patrol force over Candela, too. If word gets out about my iperion mines, we would become a special target—”

Walfor made a magnanimous gesture, smiling as he half bowed. “For you, my lady, I’ll see to it that Candela gets ships.”