Hellhole: Awakening (33 page)

She killed two and crippled three more before the guards pushed their way into her quarters by sheer force of numbers. Finally, they succeeded in slamming her down on the deck and holding her there. Dr. Hambliss rushed forward and, not bothering with any finesse, jammed the needle into her neck.

The sedative took hold within seconds, but Carrington continued to struggle, her energy dwindling until she finally collapsed, unconscious. Taking no chances, Escobar said, “Strap her down and bind her wrists. I don’t trust her to stay sedated as long as she should. Doctor, watch her closely.”

Bolton suggested, “We should put her aboard one of the storage ships where she can’t cause any more trouble.”

“She’s already caused too much trouble.” Escobar was sickened to see the four dead men sprawled on the deck, as well as the injured. She had tossed his best soldiers about like clumsy puppets. “I loathe her, but if I had a thousand fighters like her, General Adolphus would have no chance.”

“We might not live long enough to face the General,” Bolton said. As the dead and injured were carried away, he looked pale.

*   *   *

Fighting off his anger, Escobar inspected Carrington’s quarters, which she had previously kept locked. She would never have allowed him to study her records, her private communications, but now he took advantage of the vulnerability. He needed to find out what her mission was.

The woman had few possessions, only three changes of black clothing (all identical), but no secret stockpile of food or energy cubes, as he had half expected. He did, however, discover her private journal, a logbook in which she wrote reports for eventual transmission to Lord Selik Riomini.

Over the course of their voyage, and the weeks stranded here without the stringline, she had documented and distorted every one of Escobar’s missteps, his bad decisions, his failures to act, all without suggesting how she might have solved the various problems.

Escobar felt a chill when he discovered Carrington’s original orders—a private letter from Lord Riomini himself.

Escobar’s wife, Elaine, was Riomini’s grandniece, and through her family connections his military career had been enhanced. To a great extent, the Black Lord had been his benefactor, and Escobar was pleased to accept command of the fleet sent against the rebel General. He had considered it his due, a celebration of their powerful families, the Riominis and the legendary Hallholmes.

But now he learned that Gail Carrington had been sent to watch over him and ensure that this all-important mission succeeded. Her orders were ominously explicit: If Escobar was about to fail, she was to kill him so that his incompetence could cause no further damage. As an aside, Riomini promised that he would take care of Elaine and her three sons, and that he would do his best to portray Escobar as a war hero, to save face.

As Escobar read the secret orders alone in Carrington’s quarters, wide-eyed and sickened, Bolton Crais came up so quietly that he jumped. The logistics officer looked over his shoulder at the document. “Is it what you expected, sir?”

Escobar swallowed hard. “Yes, Major, I’m afraid it is.”

“What should we do with her?”

“I’d like to process her into food to sustain the troops,” Escobar replied, intending it as a joke, but the words were flat and awkward. “I don’t know, Major. At least she’s out of our way for now.”

He handed him the letter.

47

The General and Sophie Vence traveled to the Ankor spaceport, where troops boarded a shuttle to launch up to join the orbiting defense fleet. It was a cloudless day, already warmer than usual, with the greenish sky tinged in yellow.

While General Adolphus kept sixty ships and twelve unmanned weapons platforms in orbit to protect the main stringline hub, he dispatched as many ships as he could spare to other Deep Zone planets; now that Hellhole was cut off from Sonjeera, the other frontier worlds were likely targets for the frustrated Diadem’s wrath. A strike force could try to capture one of the DZ terminus rings as a back door to Hellhole, but all the planetary administrators had mined their terminus rings, which would be blown before an invading fleet could be allowed onto the iperion paths. By now, though, Governor Goler would have issued his ultimatum and explained the consequences to the Crown Jewels.

Adolphus always had other plans, fallback positions, secondary defenses, but he had placed most of his hope on the gamble that he could snare the Constellation fleet before it arrived. Now, not knowing where those ships had gone, he had to place his resources to defend Hellhole. Many colonists were building their own bunkers to survive an aerial bombardment, if it should come.

He vowed not to let that happen.

A great alien race had been wiped out on this world, but Adolphus refused to view that as a foreshadowing of the fate of his own colony. He considered the loyal people who followed him, who believed in him so completely. Diadem Michella had assumed this hellish world would destroy him, but she had not accounted for his pioneering spirit or personal drive, nor had she counted on the strength of character of those who gathered around him.

Rendo Theris looked harried and distraught, as usual. By now, Adolphus placed little stock in the man’s frantic complaints. Theris managed the Ankor complex well enough, but he seemed to operate best in a condition of perceived urgency. “General, the primary landing fields are stable, but the tremors are constant. They build day by day. You need to send seismic engineers out here to do something about it.”

“That’s not a problem specific to the spaceport, Mr. Theris. We’ve got monitors across the continent, and the largest quakes are centered around the impact crater. A major one occurred two days ago.”

“We’ve even felt them out at Slickwater Springs,” Sophie said. “We’ve always had to prepare for quakes.”

Theris shook his head. “Just because it’s worse someplace else doesn’t mean it’s not a problem here. We’ve reinforced the buildings, kept everything as stable as possible. Each major tremor disturbs the slickwater aquifer, which causes major delays and damage here—”

The General frowned. “I thought my engineers had found a solution. Aren’t they due to drain the slickwater into another valley?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve drilled cores, completed acoustic mapping of the strata beneath Ankor, and developed a plan. We’re just waiting to bore down and install sufficient explosives so we can divert it all away. Then the slickwater will stop causing so many headaches, and the spaceport can thrive.” Theris’s glimmer of optimism lasted only a few seconds, though. “Unless the Constellation fleet arrives and attacks us after all. It’s just one damn thing after another.”

“It’s Hellhole,” Sophie said with clear sarcasm. “Didn’t you read the brochure?”

The loaded troop shuttle was sealed on the pad, Ankor personnel completed a standard countdown, and the craft accelerated into the sky, all completely routine.

Then keening sirens began to sound. Alarms went off from the operations building, and spaceport personnel rushed to emergency stations. Theris’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as he looked skyward, but Adolphus didn’t see anything. “What is it?”

“Incoming ships—unidentified objects. Could be an air raid. Maybe the Constellation fleet arrived after all!” The administrator scrambled toward the main building, but the General and Sophie both beat him to the door.

“If it’s the Constellation fleet, we should have gotten warning from our defense ships in orbit,” Adolphus said.

Sophie pointed to the sky. “It’s not the Constellation—we’ve got visitors again.”

A squadron of copper ships streaked across the high olive-green clouds, flying in a peculiar, squared-off formation. The mysterious vessels swooped lower in the atmosphere, racing along in complete silence. The troop shuttle continued to climb, but the workhorse vehicle had little maneuverability. The strange ships circled it, whirling around and dodging the craft, like a flurry of wasps.

“They didn’t attack last time,” Theris said, but his voice carried little hope.

“Get all satellite eyes on them,” the General said. “Track where they’re going and what they’re doing. I want to know what those ships are.”

As if bored, they dropped away from the ascending shuttle and flitted around the basin with the launching pads and landing fields.

The spaceport’s sentry craft took off from the field to give chase, but the coppery ships outran all attempts to catch them. The unknown visitors took abrupt turns but remained in perfect formation. Two of the Ankor fighter craft took potshots at them, but the formation split up and regrouped, unconcerned about the weapons.

As quickly as they had appeared, the unknown ships shot straight upward and sped away into space. The General stared after them, but they were gone in a matter of seconds. The troop shuttle, unmolested, continued to rise until it became no more than a bright dot.

Inside the operations center, harried-looking technicians ran from screen to screen. “They scanned us again! The burst overloaded some of our systems.”

“Did the shuttle make it safely?” Sophie asked.

“The intruders didn’t interfere with it,” the tech said.

Rendo Theris went to one of the screens himself and called up satellite images, scanning across the continent. “Fortunately, thanks to our defenses, we have enough eyes up in orbit this time. Reports are flooding in. Those ships were first detected over the main impact crater, and then they buzzed Slickwater Springs.”

“I’ve got a lot of people out at the pools!” Sophie looked from Theris to the General. “Is everyone all right?”

Theris played the satellite records. “They didn’t spend much time at Slickwater Springs, just did a close surveillance, then headed to a valley midcontinent—not near any of our operations. Thankfully!”

“What’s out there?” the General asked. “Let me see.”

Theris projected images, pinpointing the site that had interested the strange ships. The isolated valley was another of the hot spots of alien vegetation, a profusion of weeds and ferns that had appeared so suddenly between the last satellite mappings. Adolphus leaned closer, studying the map. “What’s special about that valley? Mineral deposits?”

“Nothing that I can tell, sir—other than all the vegetation.”

“Somebody needs to go out there to take a look.” Sophie straightened. “Maybe the shadow-Xayans will know. I’ll take Devon and Antonia with me.”

48

As a political prisoner on Sonjeera, Governor Goler had expected more hospitable treatment. Traditionally, the prison cells for arrested, disgraced nobles were almost as luxurious as their estate houses. The fact that Goler was relegated to an austere room with few comforts showed the Diadem’s disdain for him.

But he took no great insult. He didn’t need to be pampered. After all, of the five territorial governors, only he willingly chose to live out in the Deep Zone. He kept himself happy with what Ridgetop had to offer, and he’d get by well enough here, too. He had never liked the overblown extravagance of Sonjeera anyway.

Goler thought of how Tasmine had hidden in a badger burrow while the Diadem’s soldiers massacred her fellow colonists. If his housekeeper could endure that, he had no right to complain about this cell.

He had formally requested to speak with an attorney, per Constellation law—and his request was denied without explanation. He had been kept isolated from outside news reports. By his count, he’d been incarcerated for six days, but he knew not to trust his sense of time; his keepers could try to disorient him by resetting the light-and-dark cycle in the windowless chamber.

As time dragged on, he wondered if one of his brothers would be allowed to visit him. They might be upset because his disgrace cast a shadow on their own aspirations—but so far no one had come. Maybe the Diadem had given strict orders denying him visitors. Or maybe his brothers didn’t care.

He obtained stationery and penned statements for the media as well as letters to be delivered to nobles among the Crown Jewels. The guards dutifully accepted them, but he received no replies. Goler knew none of the communiqués would ever be sent, but as a trick of his own, he added odd phrases to his sentences and planted unusual words, sure that the Diadem’s code-breakers would agonize over the actual meaning and attempt to decipher the secret codes—all of which were nonsense.

He steadfastly refused to give details about the missing Constellation fleet other than to imply that General Adolphus had captured the warships. In her obvious anxiety, the Diadem’s imagination would fill in the blanks.

Goler took comfort in knowing he had completed his mission, and by now most people in the Crown Jewels would have heard Adolphus’s offer of terms. Outside, he hoped that the pilot or copilot had managed to slip the coded message to Enva Tazaar. History would respect him for his strength, and what he did now was exceedingly important. He only hoped he didn’t have to become a martyr to achieve his goal.

When his cell door opened and a passive-looking food server brought lunch on a tray, Goler said, as he had many times before, “I demand diplomatic courtesy. I am an appointed ambassador, and you have no right to hold me here.”

“The Diadem says otherwise,” said the guard at the door.

“Then I wish to send a formal petition back to the Deep Zone.”

“Request denied. Enjoy your meal.”

The thin, brown-haired server was dressed in the gray uniform of a prison employee, not a prisoner on work detail. The man averted his eyes as he placed the tray on a small table that doubled as a desk. He moved Goler’s papers aside to make room.

The meal was a bland-looking affair of ground meat, starchy lumps that might have been dumplings, reheated vegetables, and a small pile of withered-looking sournuts, each the size of his thumbnail. The man made a point of looking at him, then said in a quiet voice, “Enjoy the sournuts, Governor.”

The innocuous comment alerted Goler. Sournuts had always been his favorite treat here on Sonjeera, but someone would have had to dig deeply into the records to learn that fact. The nuts were not often served, because they were considered too pungent for the popular taste.