She was the daughter of the manager of a large power plant on Aeroc, one of the old civilized planets long ruled by the Riomini noble family. They had a very nice home with a large kitchen, a pool in a terrarium room, and a well-tuned piano. Her mother loved music and often played at their special parties, but the best times were when she would withdraw to the conservatory alone, playing classical pieces or evocative, intricate melodies that might have been her own compositions, and Antonia sat in the hall, just listening. She even took lessons, hoping to become as good as her mother someday. Now the music was gone from her life.
When Antonia was seventeen, a dashing young man named Jako Rullins came to work for her father in the power-plant headquarters. At twenty-one, Jako was handsome, intense, clever, and obviously moving up in the world. He quickly made himself indispensible in her father’s work and often came to their home for business meetings, which turned into social occasions.
When Jako fixed his attentions on young Antonia, she had been swept away, and her parents had not objected because they liked the young man. Jako was utterly focused on Antonia whenever they were together.
Four months later, Jako asked Antonia to marry him, and her surprised parents told him to wait, explaining that she was too young, although they encouraged him to continue to court her. Despite being upset by the delay, Jako swore that he would prove his devotion to her. Antonia remembered her father smiling at the promise. “I hope you do exactly that, Mr Rullins. Just give it time.”
Jako, however, seemed to feel an urgency that Antonia found bewildering. Whenever they were alone, he tried to convince her that they should just escape somewhere, get married, and live their own lives. He was so earnest and optimistic that she almost said yes, but his intensity worried her. Although she loved Jako, she saw no reason to hurry. “We’ll still be together in a year, and then we can have the grand wedding I’ve always dreamed of.”
But Jako didn’t want to wait. He grew edgier and more possessive, though he still played the part of a gentleman. A month later, after the pair came home from one of their frequent dates, her world ended in blood and lies . . .
Over the next two years, Antonia learned to mistrust everyone around her. Jako taught her to be that way while the two of them were on the run. Then she escaped from him, too. With a new appearance and identity, she ran to the main Aeroc spaceport, completed an application in the colonization office, and signed aboard the next stringline ship heading for the Deep Zone planets. She didn’t care which one.
The ship was bound for Hellhole.
“Anything to see out there?”
Antonia turned irritably. Next to her stood a grinning, good-humored man she’d noticed on the voyage out from the Sonjeera hub. She feared that he had somehow recognized her or tracked her down, but the man seemed cheery with everyone, blithely jabbering away, pleased with his choice to go to Hallholme.
“All the ports have the same view.” She hoped he would get the hint and go away. He didn’t.
“My name is Fernando – Fernando Neron. We’re about to start a great adventure! And your name is?”
Though on her guard, Antonia realized that being too reticent would only raise suspicions. Besides, she’d have to get used to going by her assumed identity, so she decided to start now. “Antonia Anqui,” she said. “Let’s hope it’s an adventure instead of an ordeal.”
“Did you hear that, Vincent?” Fernando waved to another man who had been quiet during the entire trip. “She says she hopes it’s an adventure instead of an ordeal!”
“I heard her.” The other man nodded, more courteous than open and friendly. He had seemed preoccupied throughout the journey.
During the four-day stringline crossing, Antonia had kept to herself. Their private sleeping cabins were so tiny and claustrophobic that most passengers spent their days in the passenger pod’s common room, which forced them to get to know one another.
Very few of those aboard seemed pleased with their situation. One group, an isolationist religious cult called the Children of Amadin, avoided their fellow passengers even more than Antonia did. The cult members were easily identified by square-cut hair – both men and women – and their baggy, pale blue uniforms, which did not look as though they would hold up in a dirty wilderness environment. Another oddball religious group, looking for the promised land on Hellhole . . . or at least someplace where people would leave them alone.
A group of convicts – men and women sentenced to exile on Hallholme – was kept in a separate compartment; the Constellation liked to wash its hands of such problems and let the Deep Zone administrators deal with them. Other travelers aboard the pod were commercial representatives and government officials, engrossed in their own business and hardly interested in the other passengers.
“So what brings you to a place like Hellhole, young lady? What are you – eighteen, nineteen? And very pretty, not a typical colonist.” Fernando seemed genuinely friendly.
In her years on the run, Antonia had learned never to reveal too much about herself. She tried to be just open enough to sidestep further questions. “Maybe I’ll tell you later. For now, I’d like to enjoy a few moments of quiet. This could be our last bit of calm before we start the hard work.” She made her lips curve upward in what she hoped was a sincere-looking smile.
Fernando laughed and looked over his shoulder again. “Did you hear that, Vincent? She says we’d better enjoy the last few moments of calm.”
“I agree with her.” Vincent took his seat.
Without warning, the passenger pod shuddered. The clamping hooks released them, and the craft began to fall toward the planet.
3
The pod landed, and before any other passengers were allowed to disembark, local security troops came aboard to escort the prisoners off. Everything seemed very casual. When one of the convicts commented on the lax security, a guard brushed aside the concern. “If you run, where are you going to go? You’ve got a second chance here. The General will let you earn as much freedom as you like.”
A second chance, Vincent Jenet thought. Exactly what he needed.
Waiting at the back of the passenger pod, he felt an odd flutter in his stomach as the prisoners marched away. If not for the last-minute mercy of the magistrate on planet Orsini, he could have been included among those convicts. Thankfully, Enva Tazaar’s petty revenge hadn’t extended that far. Being sent to Hellhole was bad enough.
Vincent’s enthusiastic new friend Fernando wanted to be among the first to disembark, but Vincent was more cautious. “We’ll have a long, long time to settle in here. What’s your hurry?”
“I’m in a hurry to find the opportunities.” Fernando flashed him a grin. “First in line, first to the prize. Aren’t you anxious to begin your new life?”
During their time aboard the pod, Vincent hadn’t sought the other man’s companionship, but Fernando was not a man who needed someone else to hold up the other end of a conversation. Apparently, he believed Vincent needed “cheering up,” which might have been true. The other man didn’t pry into his situation, mainly because he spent most of the time talking about himself. Fernando’s optimism was indefatigable. Fair enough, Vincent needed optimism.
“I don’t look at the black clouds – I see the silver linings. I’ve lived on a dozen planets, made a new start over and over again. It’s an old habit for me. I’ve made my fortune so many times, I know how to do it. Stick with me, Vincent, and before long you and I will be running Hellhole!”
“I thought General Adolphus ran Hellhole.”
Fernando shifted subjects erratically. “Do you think he’s really as awful as the history books paint him?”
“I have no idea. Orsini was far from the thick of the rebellion, and I was too busy at work to pay much attention to galactic politics.”
Fernando lowered his voice, as if afraid of listening devices. “They say Adolphus is a ruthless monster, that he tortured the populations of entire planets, that he enslaved soldier
s and forced them to fly his rebel warships – to their deaths! He would fasten their hands to dead-man switches so they couldn’t leave the helm even when their ships were about to be destroyed.”
Vincent frowned. “I never heard those stories.” As if he didn’t already have second thoughts . . .
Fernando grinned again. “Well, they’re probably just stories then, even if they are ‘official’ ones. Diadem Michella smiles a lot, but I get the impression she would be a sore loser.”
“I thought she won.”
“The history books say so.”
Once the convicts disembarked, a haughty representative from the Diadem pushed his way to the front of the line ahead of the departing passengers, making the other businessmen and travelers wait. Next, the tight-knit religious group exited at their own pace. For all his eager jostling, Fernando didn’t manage to disembark any faster than if they had simply waited their turn. Vincent glanced behind him and saw that the girl Antonia was hesitating in the back, looking lost. He knew exactly how she felt.
Emerging under the greenish-brown sky, Vincent drew a deep breath of the strange-smelling air. Fernando spread his hands wide and looked around as if he had just entered paradise. “Hellhole – the place to go, when you’ve got nowhere else to go! Not exactly a vacation paradise, eh, Vincent? Still, we’re here and ready to make the best of it.”
Back on the Crown Jewel worlds, the noble holdings were so subdivided that there was little opportunity for growth or exploration. Once the stringline transportation network was extended to the untamed Deep Zone, Diadem Michella encouraged all manner of dreamers, pioneers, and risk-takers to rush to those virgin planets and claim a place for themselves. Unlike the crowded core worlds, the DZ frontier was wide open, the landscapes new, the possibilities endless.
Of all the DZ planets opened to colonization, Hallholme was at the bottom of the list, a dumping ground for undesirables: charlatans, misfits, outcasts, and criminals. Vincent had never imagined that he would be counted among that lot. He’d led a quiet life, never bothering anyone, but even so . . .
Outside in the paved spaceport area, guards escorted the convicts in a convoy out to their camp assignment. Transport vehicles and cargo flatbeds streamed away from the landing zone towards the main town a few kilometers away. While he and Fernando waited for instructions (Vincent more patiently than his friend), the blue-garbed religious group hired a transport and hurried off to their own destination, without inviting the stragglers to join them.
As the crowd dwindled around the passenger pod, Vincent tried to figure out where he was supposed to go. His stomach was in a knot. Noticing a colony reception office on the far side of the landing field, he said, “I wonder if we need to sign in and receive supplies or a welcome kit.” He looked around, hoping to find someone in authority.
“No thanks – then we’d be with all the other new arrivals, and we’ll miss our chance. I know, let’s go straight to town and see what we can find there.” Fernando took his arm and with full (and perhaps feigned) confidence, walked to a group of supply workers unloading one of the downboxes. He talked quickly, smiled, and asked for “a quick favor.” They let him and Vincent hitch a ride with a handful of businessmen from the Crown Jewel worlds.
After he reached the colony town, Vincent looked at the buildings, all of which seemed drab and squat, hunkered down against unexpected threats. He noted a lack of color, none of the verdant greens and blues of his homeworld of Orsini. Everything – even the people walking along the streets – seemed gray and brown or drab shades in between. This was going to be his new home . . .
Fernando smiled. “Ah, we’re going to fit right in, my friend.”
At twenty-nine, soft-spoken Vincent didn’t like to call attention to himself, didn’t clown around in conversations. Back on Orsini, he had lived with his retired and sickly father, Drew, tending the man’s worsening medical condition. Vincent had worked in a repair shop for large machinery, eventually becoming manager; he understood cranes and lifters, construction loaders, upboxes and downboxes. He was used to crawling right inside the engines and power pods in order to fix them. A good employee, very reliable, never causing any trouble.
But when his father’s condition changed from disability to terminal illness, Vincent found himself sliding into a bottomless pit of treatments, medical experts and contradictory medical specialists offering expensive and unproven options. Cheaper regimens were either ineffective or had hundreds of patients ahead of his father.
Vincent drained all the money from his savings. He refused to accept that his father was dying, and no treatments were going to cure him. Vincent worked overtime at the shop, trying to earn more money as a solution. While expressing sympathies, his boss, Mr Engermann, insisted that he could only afford to pay him a token bonus.
Vincent, however, knew why the man couldn’t pay more: Engermann collected expensive glass-and-aerogel sculptures. The levitating sculptures were exquisite and innovative, but their value rested on the fact that their creator was Enva Tazaar, daughter of the planetary lord. The woman fancied herself an artist and had all the wealth and leisure time to prove it. Enva sold her sculptures as fast as she could create them, and Vincent’s boss had six in his collection. Mr Engermann bought them not because he was an art lover, but to curry favor with Lord Tazaar.
But even when Vincent put in countless extra hours and turned over dozens of new work tickets, Engermann said he couldn’t afford to pay any more. The situation frustrated Vincent; this wasn’t how his life was supposed to be.
Upon learning of a promising experimental treatment for his father’s condition, Vincent became convinced it was the cure he had been searching for. Drew Jenet didn’t have much time, and Vincent had to find a way to get the money for the treatment. Though Drew begged his son to accept the inevitable, Vincent doggedly refused to surrender.
The more he thought about it, the more incensed he became that Mr Engermann wasted so much money on Tazaar sculptures, which he displayed like treasures in the headquarters office. Any one of those objects, if sold quietly on the black market, could pay for the experimental treatment. It seemed immoral that his boss could waste so much wealth on a frivolous thing, when another man’s life could be saved.
Rationalizing his actions, Vincent broke into the repair-shop office at night and stole one of the valuable sculptures – only one – and left the remaining five untouched (a fact that baffled investigators of the crime). But he didn’t need more. Selling a single sculpture yielded enough money to secure the treatment, and Vincent did so without delay or regrets. Once he solved his father’s problem, he could catch his breath, slowly but surely put away a nest egg, and find a way to pay Mr Engermann back.
Though Vincent was careful, he hadn’t counted on Enva Tazaar’s obsessive interest in each of her sculptures. When she heard that a new buyer had made a purchase, she hired security experts to track the payment and turned the information over to authorities, who pinpointed Vincent Jenet and arrested him.
But he had already spent the money on the risky but vital treatment. Though guilty, Vincent knew he had made the right choice. He did not deny the charges; he had done what he had to do.
A week later, Drew Jenet died of complications from the procedure.
Ruined, distraught, and now on trial for theft, Vincent had nothing left to lose when the convicting magistrate offered him a choice: do prison time or relinquish all ties to his home and volunteer for relocation to the Deep Zone. Many of the untamed worlds were perfectly habitable, with pleasant climates, abundant resources, and plentiful opportunities. Though he hated uncertainty, he had to start a new life. He signed the forms with no regrets.
However, Enva Tazaar held a grudge against him for stealing one of her precious sculptures. Despite the fact that Vincent was a nonviolent prisoner, with no prior record, and a sympathetic motive for his crime, the noblewoman pulled strings to make sure he was assigned to the worst possible planet in the Deep Zon
e . . .
Vincent had dreaded arriving, certain that everyone would shun him for his crimes, but now that he was on Hallholme, he saw he wasn’t alone. Every one of these colonists probably had some uncomfortable reason for ending up here.
Nevertheless, he expected someone to give him instructions. Surely they had some sort of standard procedures for new arrivals? He stood with Fernando in the streets of Michella Town, wondering where to go. Undaunted, his friend set off down the main street, as if he had business to accomplish. Given his obvious confidence, no one bothered to offer advice or ask them questions. Vincent muttered to his friend, “Now what do we do?”
Fernando flashed a bright smile and said, with no embarrassment whatsoever, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
4
Diadem Michella’s motor carriage rolled past the reflecting pools and ornamental gardens of Sonjeera’s grand palace, then sped across the verdant valley toward Council City.
Previous Diadems had occupied fabulous royal residences in the heart of that sprawling metropolis, but such buildings had long since been converted to other government uses: offices, meeting chambers, festival halls, records vaults. To emphasize the importance of her supreme role, Michella separated herself from the crowds and bustle, living on an ostentatious estate out in the country.
Council City’s weathered copper rooftops and ivy-covered walls gave it the aura of an intellectual center, like a university town. Seated in the rear of her state vehicle, the old woman shook her head in bitter amusement. What absurdities took place inside those structures of bureaucracy! Committees and offices were created solely to give impressive-sounding titles to nobles so they would not feel useless. Lawmakers formed childish alliances to oppose her policies – not because they objected to the policies themselves, but becasue they believed that opposing her made them appear powerful. At least it kept them busy.
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