Hellhole: Awakening (7 page)

“General Adolphus is the greatest threat the Constellation has faced in modern times. If I can take credit for his defeat, no one will question my succession to the Star Throne. But if Escobar fails, the debacle would have the opposite effect on the Riomini family name. Worst case, we’ll use Escobar Hallholme as a scapegoat to shield me.”

Gail did not seem concerned. “I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong in the first place, my Lord.”

He smiled. “I know you will. And if you find where General Adolphus gets his iperion, then so much the better.”

She stood at attention. “Your mission objectives are completely clear, sir. I will depart for Aeroc posthaste and join the fleet before the ships head off.”

8

When his spies returned from Sonjeera with their vital intelligence, General Adolphus took a fast flyer out to meet them at the expanded spaceport city at Ankor. The
Kerris
had just arrived from the Crown Jewels, and Turlo Urvancik transmitted the exhilarating news. “General, we have it.”

Adolphus could finally set his trap.

Diadem Michella knew nothing about Hellhole’s second spaceport city; the entire installation was another one of the General’s intricate secret operations. Official Constellation records listed Ankor as a distant mining outpost worked by the worst exiled convicts, a place where the rugged terrain and isolation provided more security than any number of guards. The Diadem’s nosy inspectors had never bothered to make the long, unpleasant trek to the other side of the continent just to look at a few mines and factories.

So, the General managed to build his new spaceport there without the Constellation suspecting a thing.

After revealing his new stringline network, though, he had cast aside all pretenses. As DZ operations expanded, Ankor would become a bustling commercial complex. The colonists merely had to prevent themselves from being obliterated in the meantime.…

Adolphus arrived in a basin surrounded by stark brown-and-red mountains. Downboxes landed in large paved areas; launching gantries catapulted ships up to orbit. With a blast of white smoke and dancing orange flame, a carrier shuttle heaved itself upward and dwindled to a bright point in the sky.

Groups of evacuees waited to board the next crowded passenger pod. In the three months since he had proclaimed DZ independence, many people had fled Hellhole, fearing a disastrous retaliation from the Crown Jewels. They piled aboard stringline ships and headed to other, supposedly safer Deep Zone planets. Ever-increasing quakes across the continent also made the settlers uneasy, and even more chose to evacuate. Many of the colonists, though, did not have the resources to leave Hellhole.…

In anticipation of increased space traffic through the Hellhole hub, construction teams were erecting two new lodging complexes—not quite luxury hotels, Adolphus thought, but they would improve in time. Dust that had been whipped up from dry lake beds drifted in gauzy brown clouds over the basin and settled in a fine grit across the landed vessels and the walkway. Adolphus wrinkled his nose at the powdery smell in the air, alkali mixed with exhaust fumes and volatile fuels. But it was the smell of industry, of progress.

Sophie accompanied him on the quick trip, ostensibly because she wanted to inspect the distribution operations. “I’ve hardly seen you this week,” she said as they walked from the landed flyer toward the towering gantries. “I’ve gone to three factories in the last two days, verifying their output, found spare parts for two retooled process lines in the weapons factories, and even visited mining operations.”

“You never struck me as the stay-at-home type anyway.”

“I’m not.” She took his arm. “I’ll make damn sure everything is ready so we can thumb our noses at the Constellation fleet when it arrives.”

Of the functional ships that Adolphus had so far incorporated into the DZ Defense Force, the bulk of them remained in Hellhole orbit to guard the stringline operations, while a large number had been distributed to other key worlds. When they departed after the telemancy demonstration, Tanja Hu and Ian Walfor took the six unfinished ships on a stringline hauler to Theser for the eccentric engineers there to install new stardrives. Then, when the ships were complete, Tanja would base them at her own planet of Candela as a first line of defense. Since the Diadem herself had decommissioned the stringline from Sonjeera to Buktu years ago, Walfor felt his own planetoid was safe enough, so he relinquished any claim on the ships he might have kept, sending them to other DZ worlds instead.

Adolphus gave Sophie a firm smile as they approached the spaceport operations building. The cubical structure was fashioned from fused silica bricks that gleamed in bright sunlight. “If the Urvanciks bring the intelligence I need,” he said, “I’m confident I can prevent the Constellation fleet from bothering us at all.”

At the door of the operations building, Rendo Theris welcomed the visitors. Short and muscular, Administrator Theris had very little hair on his head, just a few wisps of rusty red that stood up in the breeze. The spaceport administrator looked harried, his clothes wrinkled and smudged.

The man was not Adolphus’s first choice to manage the major spaceport, but the very competent team of Tel and Renny Clovis had been lost—Renny perished when a sinkhole had swallowed up the construction dozer he was driving; the tragedy had driven a grief-stricken Tel to immerse himself in slickwater and acquire a Xayan personality.

Before Theris could open the conversation with complaints, as he often did, Adolphus asked, “Are the Urvanciks on their way?”

“Descending now, sir. Their passenger pod is en route.” Theris wiped a hand across his brow, more focused on his own problems than Hellhole’s desperate situation. “I need help around here, General. Ankor is understaffed, and we can’t handle the increased traffic. We should beef up security, too—in case those strange ships come back.”

“More sightings?” Sophie asked. “Any idea what they were or where they came from?”

Two weeks earlier, a squadron of unidentified ships had streaked in from nowhere
,
darting over the Ankor complex. They moved like swift recon vessels, dodging the spaceport defenses. They had transmitted no message, made no contact whatsoever, then flitted away. When he first reviewed the alarming images, Adolphus was convinced the ships were Constellation spies, but his engineering experts had never seen the design before and could not understand any vessel that could perform such maneuvers.

“Haven’t seen them again—and we can be thankful for that!” Theris said with a groan. “All we need is another crisis.”

As if the already flustered administrator had tempted fate, the ground began to tremble. The nearest gantry tilted, and a sealed box dangling from a cargo crane swung back and forth before it broke loose and crashed to the paved landing field. The rumbling grew louder. As the fused silica wall blocks cracked and shifted, Theris darted away from the operations building. Adolphus and Sophie ran clear of falling debris. A jagged fissure split the paved landing area, and the ground swelled, heaved … then fell quiet again.

As the quake diminished to silence, Theris caught his breath, struggling to control his panic. “These tremors have been increasing in intensity and frequency. Fourth one this week! Now we’ll have to check the launcher alignments and repair the landing fields.” He used the codecall at his collar to shout to his support technicians. “Do an inspection immediately—we have a passenger pod descending!” Spaceport personnel scrambled about to certify a section of the landing field for the Urvanciks’ passenger pod.

Adolphus marched across the pavement, keeping his eyes on the fissure to assess the damage, unable to forget how the ground had swallowed Renny Clovis before his eyes. Liquid began to ooze from the jagged crack as if a water main had broken, spilling across the black, sealed surface.

Sophie put a cautioning hand on his arm. “Careful, that’s slickwater.”

Adolphus stepped closer to the slow, almost sentient movement of the data-charged fluid, unafraid, though he had no intention of becoming a convert.

Theris paled and hung back even farther. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been plagued by slickwater seeps around here. Whenever we excavate new areas or try to put down deep pilings, we run into fresh leaks. We’ve known for a long time that a significant slickwater aquifer lies beneath the site, but the liquid seems to be swelling up, rising to the surface and causing more problems for us. We aren’t able to finish expanding the spaceport until we drain it away.”

Adolphus pressed his lips together. This was a serious setback that affected the future of the spaceport. “I’ll send engineers to develop a plan. I’m sure they can drill down, breach the aquifer, and drain it into the basin on the other side of the mountains.”

As the three of them watched, the alien fluid retreated as if by its own choice, seeping back into the ground, leaving the cracked pavement dry. “If you can get the slickwater to cooperate, sir,” Theris said.

Sophie suggested, “Maybe Devon and Antonia can help?”

Hearing a rumble of sonic booms, Adolphus looked up to see the descending passenger pod. Theris used the codecall at his collar, and a flight director frantically transmitted revised instructions to the pilot, who altered course and guided the passenger pod to a new landing zone. Technicians ran across the field to wave in final positioning at an undamaged spot.

Adolphus brushed dust off the front of his shirt and stood ready as the passenger pod’s hatch opened. Turlo and Sunitha Urvancik emerged, and their expressions lit up. Turlo blurted out, “General, the Constellation fleet is due to depart in five days!” The barrel-chested man pulled out a wrinkled wrapper from a package of nuts, holding it between his two fingers. “Molecular imprinting: We have here the plans of the Army of the Constellation.”

Adolphus felt both relief and determination. “I’ve put most of our defenses in place already, but this will fill in the rest of the blanks. Now we have them!”

A stray breeze blew the wrapper out of Turlo’s grasp; he and Sunitha scrambled after it, snatched it from the field, and handed it to the General. “And, sir, there’s one other thing.” Turlo looked flushed and breathless. “The commander of the fleet is the son of Commodore Hallholme!”

*   *   *

Adolphus commandeered Rendo Theris’s office inside the cluttered operations building. He requested a precision surface-layer scanner from one of the spaceport techs and revealed the hidden intelligence files that Dak Telom had obtained. The General read the summaries and viewed images of the full Constellation fleet being assembled on Aeroc. He had every detail he could possibly need. It was all a matter of planning.

Turlo and Sunitha sat across the table, fidgeting but relieved. The General studied the classified orders. “This is beautiful data. More than I could have hoped for. Our response is going to require careful timing, maybe even more precise than our Destination Day announcement of all the new DZ stringlines.”

Sophie smiled. “You’ve done it before, Tiber.”

“Yes, I have.”

Sunitha Urvancik sounded hopeful. “So this is enough to help us defend the DZ?”

“Oh, better than that.” He gave the two linerunners a warm smile. “In a single maneuver, we’re going to defeat the Army of the Constellation—and you two will play important roles.”

9

When the Diadem’s fleet finally launched for the Sonjeera hub, Redcom Escobar Hallholme made certain that satellite images and ground-based cameras captured the spectacle. If this operation succeeded—and it
would
—his name was going to be as prominent in the historical records as his father’s. At last, a measure of well-deserved respect. His entire career had existed in the shadow of expectations.

In a gold-and-black Constellation uniform, he stood on the bridge of his flagship,
Diadem’s Glory,
which was clamped with nineteen other warships in the framework of the stringline hauler. He wished his father could have been there to observe the fleet’s departure; such a gesture of support would have meant a great deal to Escobar, but the old man had bowed out, choosing to remain at the family estate on Qiorfu.

On further consideration, Escobar thought the Commodore might have done him a courtesy by staying away. The doddering war hero would have stolen all the attention from his son.…

“Our ships are secured in docking clamps, Redcom,” said Lieutenant Aura Cristaine, the flagship’s first officer. “Stringline engines are primed for departure. The five haulers are ready to leave the Aeroc terminus.”

Drawing a deep breath, Escobar nodded. “I want the haulers to arrive one after the other at Sonjeera—it’ll be quite a spectacle. Consider it a practice for when we sweep in to planet Hallholme.”

Lieutenant Cristaine tapped her earadio. “Yes, Redcom. Each hauler pilot acknowledges.”

He stood straight, hands clasped behind his back, conscious of the imagers recording every moment. “Departure is hereby authorized. We won’t give the General’s rebellion another day to gather momentum.”

He looked out the broad forward screen of the
Diadem’s Glory,
but the view was cluttered with warships arrayed in the framework. The five large military haulers began to move out from the Aeroc terminus ring, one after another, lining up on the iperion path for Sonjeera. The short trip to the Constellation’s capital world would take only three hours, whereupon the officers would attend a special ceremony hosted by the Diadem: more politics, more showmanship … and more delays.

From one side of the bridge, not quite unobtrusive, Gail Carrington watched his every move. At the last minute, the hard-looking woman had been assigned to the flagship as a special observer, a mysterious officer of classified rank. Escobar had known nothing about it in advance, but since she was here by explicit order of Lord Riomini, he was powerless to challenge her presence. The woman’s intense blue eyes observed the operations as if looking for a weak spot, filing away every detail. Escobar tried to ignore her.