by David Weber
But there was more traffic to and from the Cerberus System, albeit on an extremely erratic schedule, than she’d assumed would be the case. For one thing, runs to deliver new prisoners had gone up dramatically after the Committee of Public Safety took over. One of the old Office of Internal Security’s failings had been that it hadn’t been repressive enough. A regime which relied on the iron fist to stay in power was asking for trouble if it relaxed its grip by even a millimeter, and the Legislaturalist leadership had made the mistake of clamping down hard enough to enrage its enemies, but not hard enough to eliminate them outright or terrify them into impotence. Worse, they’d ordered occasional amnesties under which political prisoners were released to placate the Mob, which put people who’d experienced InSec’s brutality from the inside back outside to tell their tales of mistreatment—a heaven-sent propaganda opportunity for the agitators of the Citizens Rights Union and other dissident groups. Worse, perhaps, it had suggested a sense of weakness on InSec’s part, for why would they have attempted to placate their enemies if they’d felt they were in a position of strength?
The Committee of Public Safety, having been the recipient of such assistance from its predecessors, had decided that it would err by going to the opposite extreme. Its determination not to extend the same encouragement to its own enemies went a long way towards explaining the brutal thoroughness which had made Oscar Saint-Just’s security forces so widely and virulently hated.
It also explained why the Peeps were dumping even more prisoners on Hell these days. It served them simultaneously as a place to put potential troublemakers safely out of the way and a not-so-veiled threat to keep other troublemakers in line back home. And it was also much thriftier than simply shooting everyone who got out of line. Not that they were shy about summary executions, but the problem with shooting people was that executions were fairly permanent... and deprived the state of any potential usefulness the troublemakers might have offered down the road. If you just stuck them on Hell and left them there, you could always retrieve them later if it turned out you needed them for something worthwhile.
In point of fact, StateSec seemed to regard Hell, and especially its political prisoners, as a sort of piggy bank for conscripted labor forces. Even the most modern of industrial bases (which the PRH’s was not) had its share of jobs which ranged from the unpleasant to the acutely dangerous. More than that, StateSec had its own highly secret projects, which it preferred to keep as quiet as possible, and there were people among Hell’s politicals who had skills those projects sometimes needed badly. For that matter, before the war with the Star Kingdom broke out, StateSec’s predecessors in the Office of Internal Security had used Hell as a source of "colonists" (or at least construction crews) for some less than idyllic worlds where the People’s Navy needed basing facilities and then returned the workers to Hell when the job was done.
All of which meant that StateSec-crewed personnel transports arrived at Hell, invariably with a warship escort these days, at highly unpredictable but fairly frequent intervals. More rarely, one of StateSec’s warships which found itself in the area or passing nearby on its own business might drop by for fresh food, to pick up reactor mass from the huge tank farm StateSec maintained in orbit around Hell, or for a little planetside R&R.
One might not normally think of a "prison planet" as a place where people would want to take liberty, but Camp Charon was actually quite luxurious (InSec had chosen to pamper the personnel who found themselves stuck out here, and StateSec had seen no reason to change that policy), and Styx’s climate would have stood comparison with that of any resort world. Which made sense, Honor supposed. It was only reasonable to put your permanent base in the most pleasant spot you could find, and with an entire planet to choose from, you ought to be able to find at least a few spots that were very pleasant indeed.
Besides, she thought grimly, this is StateSec’s planet. They own it, lock, stock, and barrel, and they feel safe here. I don’t think ONI’s ever realized just how important that is to them. It may be off the beaten track, and months may go by with no one at all dropping by, but they always know Hell is out here, like some sort of refuge. Or like some nasty little adolescent gang’s "clubhouse."
She snorted at the thought and brushed it aside. It probably had all kinds of psychological significance, but at the moment it was definitely secondary to the problem they faced.
And solving the problem they faced required certain preconditions. Like a Peep supply run to Inferno which happened to arrive when no other supply shuttle had a direct line of transmission to the camp. And which wasn’t on the com when it arrived but had been on the com at some point prior to its arrival.
So far, they’d been through three complete supply cycles without meeting the conditions they needed, and Honor was honest enough to admit that the strain of waiting was getting to her. At least the rations the Peeps were delivering were sufficient to feed all her people as well as Inferno’s "legal" population. The garrison wasn’t very careful about counting noses except for the twice-a-T-year prison census, and a dozen or so of Inferno’s inmates had died of natural causes since the last headcount, so there was ample food to go around.
Actually, the Peeps were fairly generous in their food allocations... when they weren’t cutting rations in punishment, at least. Probably because it didn’t cost them anything to feed their prisoners a diet which would actually keep them healthy. Honor was almost back up to her proper weight now, and her hair had changed from a short fuzz to a curly, close-growing cap. There was nothing Fritz Montoya could do about her missing arm, blind eye, or dead nerves, and she’d found that the lost arm, in particular, made it very difficult for her to pursue her normal exercise regime. But Montoya was insufferably pleased with the results of the rest of his ministrations, and she had to admit he had cause to be.
She gave herself a mental shake as she recognized the signs. Her thoughts were beginning to wander again, which meant Alistair wasn’t the only person who’d stayed up too late.
She stood, holding Nimitz in the crook of her arm, and smiled at the other two.
"Well, whatever happens, we can’t do a thing until the next food run. In the meantime, I think I need some sleep. I’ll see you both at breakfast."
"Of course," Ramirez replied. He and Benson both rose, and Honor nodded to them.
"Good night, then," she said and stepped out the door into the bug-whining night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"Commodore Harrington! Commodore Harrington! "
Honor looked up and turned quickly. Her missing arm left her unable to help very much with most of the tasks required to keep Camp Inferno’s small community alive, but she’d discovered that she had a much better eye for color than she’d ever realized. It wasn’t, after all, a subject she’d had a great deal of time to explore prior to her trip to Hell. But since her arrival at Inferno, she’d begun helping Henri Dessouix and his assistants experiment with the dyes they used on their handmade clothing. As Ramirez’ exec, Harriet Benson was in charge of managing the camp’s manpower pool, and she had detailed Lieutenant Stephenson, late of the Lowell Space Navy, as Honor’s assistant. Stephenson had no color judgment at all, but he did have two sound and brawny arms to man the mortar and pestle in which Dessouix crushed roots, berries, leaves, and anything else he could find to provide dyes. He also had a cheerful disposition, and he and Honor had been experimenting with new dye combinations for almost three months now. They were close to producing a green which was almost identical to the dark jade Honor had chosen for the tunics of her Grayson armsmen, but she forgot about that in an instant as she saw the expression on Ramirez’ messenger’s face... and felt the other woman’s jagged emotions.
"Yes?" she said sharply, and heard Andrew LaFollet’s feet thump on the ground as he slithered down out of the tree from which he had been keeping watch over his Steadholder.
"Commodore Ramirez... says to come quick, Ma’am!" the messenger gasped, panting ha
rd after her dead run through the afternoon’s searing heat. "He says... he says Grandma is inbound!"
Honor’s head snapped around, her good eye meeting LaFollet’s, and felt the sudden explosive excitement ripping through her armsman. He looked back at her for a second, then unhooked the small com unit from his belt and held it out to her without a word.
She took it and drew a deep breath, then punched the transmit button. It was one of StateSec’s own security coms, and they’d chosen a frequency as far as possible from those the SS here on Hell routinely used and set it up for burst transmission. But they hadn’t encrypted it, on the theory that if anyone else happened to pick it up anyway, it would be better for Camp Charon to hear a random scrap of chatter which might not make any sense but had to have come from one of their people rather than start wondering why someone was encrypting his traffic.
Not that she intended for the transmission to be long.
"Wolf," she said calmly into the com. "I say again, Wolf."
There was an instant of silence, and then the startled voice of Sarah DuChene came back to her.
"Copy Wolf," DuChene said. "Repeat, copy Wolf."
Honor’s fierce half-grin was more of a snarl, baring the teeth on the right side of her mouth, and she tossed the com back to LaFollet, then scooped Nimitz up into his carrier, wheeled, and ran for the main camp as hard as she could.
* * *
Citizen Lieutenant Allen Jardine yawned mightily as he swept around in a shallow turn and lined up on the ceramacrete shuttle pad. It was the only break in the sword grass—aside from the POWs’ crude village, of course—which made it easily visible even from four or five thousand meters. From Jardine’s present low altitude, it showed up still more clearly, and he looked over his shoulder as he dumped forward velocity.
"Coming up on Inferno," he called to his bored three-man crew. "Up top again, Gearing."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Citizen Corporal Gearing grumbled. He climbed back into the stirrups of the dorsal turret and twisted the joystick to test the heavy tribarrel. The turret whined as it rotated smoothly, and Gearing’s put upon voice sounded in Jardine’s earbug. "Turret check. Powered up. Gun hot."
"Confirm turret check," Jardine replied crisply. Despite his own almost unendurable boredom, the citizen lieutenant insisted on following SOP to the letter. That made him unique among the grocery flight pilots (and extremely unpopular with his flight crews), but he’d only been on Hades for about nine T-months, and he was determined to avoid the kind of casual torpor which seemed to infect so many of his fellows. It was also, he suspected, the reason Citizen Brigadier Tresca tended to choose him so often for the run to Inferno. If anyone was likely to make trouble, it was undoubtedly the stiff-necked intransigents here.
Not that even the Inferno inmates would actually be stupid enough to try anything, Jardine reminded himself. All they’d buy if they did was slow starvation, and they knew it. So the other shuttle jocks were probably right when they urged him to ease up on his flight crews. He knew that. It just went against the grain with him to do anything any more sloppily than he had to, and he grinned wryly at his own bloody-mindedness as he flared out, extended his gear, and settled towards the pad.
* * *
"Stand by," Honor murmured softly. She sat cross-legged under the cammo net they’d rigged on the hill from which she had first observed Camp Inferno. Her position was a good omen, she reflected... and so was the fact that, as closely as she could calculate, the Peeps had captured Prince Adrian almost exactly a year ago.
We owe ourselves a little anniversary present, she told herself, and the right side of her mouth twisted in a hungry smile.
Behind her, the satellite com gear they’d lugged from the shuttles and hidden with painstaking care atop the hill was plugged into the Peeps’ com net, listening for any scrap of traffic between it and the cargo shuttle settling towards the pad outside the camp. Unlike most of the supply shuttles, this one’s pilot had checked in after each landing on his schedule to report his safe arrival, which had given her people plenty of time to steal its IFF settings. That was a sort of adherence to proper operating principles which very few of the Peep pilots ever displayed, and it was almost a pity, she thought regretfully. People who bothered to do their jobs deserved better than for their very attendance to duty to bring destruction down on them.
She raised the binoculars again, listening to the earbug tied into the StateSec net and feeling Alistair McKeon’s taut readiness beside her. Nimitz stood upright in the carrier, now slung across her back, pressing his triangular jaw into the top of her shoulder as he stared down at the shuttle pad with her, and the bright flame of his predator anticipation burned at the heart of her own like a fire.
* * *
The shuttle settled with neat precision in the center of the pad, and Jardine allowed himself a small smile of self-congratulation. A trash hauler was hardly a sexy mount, but it was nice to demonstrate that he still had the precision of control which had gotten him promoted to Camp Charon.
Yeah, and if I’d known how exciting it was going to be, you can bet I’d have blown off the chance to get my ass sent here, too, prestige posting or not! he thought with a silent chuckle, and keyed his com.
"Base, this is Jardine," he reported. "On the ground at Inferno."
"Check, Jardine," Base Ops replied in a voice tinged with ineffable boredom. The woman on the other end of the com didn’t quite invite the citizen lieutenant to go away and quit bothering her in so many words, but her tone got the message across quite handily.
And that’s exactly why I enjoy reporting in so much, Jardine thought with a nasty smile. Citizen Major Steiner wasn’t as bad as a lot of the other base personnel, and she was actually fairly competent. But she was just as set in her ways as anyone else, and she’d leaned harder on Jardine than most about easing up on The Book. She hadn’t been confrontational about it, but she’d made her point with a fair degree of emphasis, and she was too senior for him to fire back at her the way he’d wanted to.
But, of course, she can’t officially complain if all I do is follow Regs, now can she? And if that just happens to rub it in with a little salt...
He chuckled and looked over his shoulder at his crew.
* * *
"He’s transmitted," Honor said quietly, good eye aching as she stared through her binoculars.
Come on, Jardine, she thought silently, almost prayerfully, at the pilot. Be sloppy just this once. Break SOP just a little bit, please. I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.
* * *
"All right, Rodgers. Over to you and Fierenzi."
"Gee, thanks a whole hell of a lot," Citizen Sergeant Rodgers muttered just loud enough for Jardine to hear but not quite loud enough he couldn’t pretend he’d thought he was talking only to himself if the citizen lieutenant jerked him up short over it. Not that Rodgers really cared a whole hell of a lot. He was an old Hades hand, and he’d seen a handful of other hotshots like Jardine come and go. The citizen lieutenant’s by-the-book, pain-in-the-ass mania for details had lasted longer than most, but sooner or later Hades took the starch out of even the most regulation personality. Still, it would be nice if Jardine would go ahead and get it the hell out of his system and be done with it.
But he wouldn’t—or not yet, anyway—and that meant he’d be staying at the controls with the turbines spooling over and Gearing would be staying on the dorsal gun, just in case. And that meant it was going to be completely up to Rodgers and Citizen Corporal Fierenzi to unload all the stinking food for the useless bastards here in Inferno.
Of course, there are some pluses, Rodgers reminded himself as he hit the button and the big rear cargo hatch whined open. I may be stuck humping this stuff out, but it’ll give me a fresh chance to look over the local talent. If that cute little brunette’s still out here, maybe I’ll just cut her out of the herd and take her back to Styx with me.
And maybe he wouldn’t, too, he thought. None of t
he prison bait in Inferno had been sent here for good behavior, after all. Cute as that sweet little number looked, ordering her into his bed might not be the very smartest thing he could possibly do.
He chuckled at the thought and stepped out into the brilliant sunlight with Fierenzi on his heels.
That’s funny, he thought. They had to hear us coming, so why the hell aren’t any of ’em already out here to unload their damned food?
* * *
"They’re following the rules," Honor said, and McKeon heard the sadness in her voice. "Just two of them, and they’re already starting to look around," she went on. "I’m afraid we don’t have any choice, Alistair." She paused for a heartbeat, then sighed.
"Do it," she said softly.
Commodore Alistair McKeon pressed a button, and a strand of old-fashioned fiberoptic cable flashed the signal to the detonators on five hundred kilos of the very best chemical explosives State Security had once owned. Those five hundred kilos were buried directly under the center of the shuttle pad—beneath, in fact, the exact point on which Citizen Lieutenant Jardine’s precise piloting had deposited his shuttle.
The thunderous explosion smashed at Honor’s face and eardrums even at a full kilometer’s range, and the local equivalent of birds erupted from the trees in a shrill, yodeling chorus of protest as the dreadful sound reverberated. The shuttle vanished in a flaming fountain of dirt and debris, taking its entire crew with it, and Honor felt a stab of terrible guilt. She hadn’t had a choice... but that made her feel no less like an assassin.