Tanja hurried forward as a slingvator cage glided down the side of the hull. She slipped into the cage, and it reeled her upward into the open hatch. As she stepped through the open cargo area, she saw secured shipping containers piled deck to ceiling, bulkhead to bulkhead. This was one of the craft Walfor used to haul materials to and from his larger cargo ships, which surreptitiously made the rounds among carefully selected planets that were within reach of his engines.
A pair of Buktu men in gray onesuits worked in the hold, carrying e-boards, tapping in inventory entries. Adjusting a cargo strap, a plump, frizzy-haired man cordially gestured her forward, along a narrow aisle-way. “Captain Walfor is waiting for you.”
Walfor’s black marketeers operated an eclectic assortment of souped-up old FTL spacecraft and smaller shuttles that were no longer listed on any official records. He picked them up wherever he could.
In the original plan, the Constellation’s trailblazers had laid down iperion paths from Sonjeera to all fifty-four DZ worlds, and once the paths were painted, stringline-capable vessels could race along at fantastic speeds. However, when the obscure Deep Zone planet Buktu proved to be an unprofitable destination, the Diadem signed an order to cease maintenance on that particular line, effectively cutting off Walfor and his people. With smiling generosity, Michella had offered to rescue and relocate the small population, but – much to everyone’s surprise – they unanimously refused, saying they would remain behind and take their chances on their cold, isolated rock, as they had done for some time.
Unknown to the Diadem, Ian Walfor had an idea that made his out-of-the-way location valuable.
Long ago, when the original pioneers ventured into the DZ, their vessels had carried only enough fuel for a one-way trip. Arriving at their destinations, those ships were abandoned, cannibalized for spare parts, and supposedly scuttled. However, Walfor had collected a number of those old ships and put them into service as a slow-boat form of transportation. On Buktu, his hardy frontiersmen developed their own secret industrial facilities, manufacturing fuel for the FTL drives from local ices and gases, and they improved the antique propulsion systems to make the ships faster. In that manner they had thrived for years, completely beyond the notice of the Constellation.
As she reached the cockpit, Tanja said, “You don’t make a subtle entrance, do you?” She strapped herself into a bucket seat beside him. “What happened to keeping a low profile?”
He looked completely innocent. “Why, I’m just delivering foodstuffs, building products, and machinery to needy villagers on your planet.”
“And you’d better head out soon or you won’t get to Hellhole in time. The General will be waiting for you.”
Walfor went through the take-off sequence, then sped quietly across the landscape. “Are you that anxious to get rid of me?”
Tanja sat back and held on. “We’ve got a meeting scheduled there, and you take a lot longer to travel than the rest of us do. Besides, I need you to get your unauthorized cargo vessel away from Candela before the next stringline hauler arrives from Sonjeera.”
Walfor didn’t seem concerned. “Oh, I doubt the Constellation pilot will even rouse himself from his nap when he gets here – but we’ll be long gone, don’t you worry your pretty head. Right now, I can spend just a little more time with you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You realize you don’t have a chance with me, right? But you’re welcome to keep trying.”
He grinned. “All right, then I’ll keep trying.”
Despite his attitude, she knew that Walfor always did as he promised. She liked him as a friend and business associate, and he performed his work very well. Important work, as she and General Adolphus knew. He had enjoyed his week of downtime here on Candela, but it was time for him to load the processed iperion aboard his vessel and head off . . .
After they set down on a paved field 200 kilometers north, he switched to another antique propulsion system and taxied to a large, weathered warehouse – Walfor’s hub for distribution to the most populated areas of the planet. As he and Tanja emerged, crewmen were busy unloading crates from the shuttle and loading them onto trucks for delivery to Puhau and other isolated mountain towns.
“That’s the last of everything I brought with me from Boj,” he said. “Special discount for my favorite planetary administrator. If you feel inclined to offer any personal bonuses . . .”
“I’ve offered you and your crew plenty of hospitality in the past week. Time to get to work. Uncle Quinn has the iperion shipment ready to go.”
Inside the warehouse they found seats in a cafeteria on the second level, and Walfor retrieved them each a bottle of local beer. Tanja downed hers and followed it with a container of cold water. She watched the cargo activities outside and mused aloud, “My accountants say your profit margins are so low that they can’t believe you’re making any money from the Candela run.”
“Oh? You want me to raise my prices?”
“No, it’s just that the practitioners of your profession are not exactly known for being honest.”
“Maybe I’m giving you a special deal because I like you.” He smiled at her, and she didn’t believe it for a minute. He finally said, “All right, I have a higher calling, a long-range vision. The General’s plan makes a lot of sense. If it works, then everyone in the Deep Zone makes a lot more profit.” He seemed uncharacteristically sincere rather than cocky. “I think of it as an investment.”
“We’re each making a hefty investment,” she said. And taking a deadly risk.
Using her own financing, Tanja had quietly purchased a group of off-the-books trailblazer vessels that had been decommissioned after the new Constellation network was complete. Since the Diadem had no further use for the vessels, Tanja was able to buy them at fire-sale prices, supposedly to be used for local planetary purposes. Ian Walfor’s crew at Buktu had refitted and launched them, secretly delivering them to General Adolphus. With regular supplies of Candela iperion, the co-conspirators had everything they needed.
Finishing her water, she stood. “Much as I enjoy your company, Ian, I need to cut our date short and make arrangements to get to Hellhole myself. Your trip may take longer, but mine is a lot more roundabout. The General won’t want either of us to be late.”
“Oh, he’ll soften up once I arrive with the iperion shipment. I’ll be there.”
“That’s all I ask.”
21
When they set off across Hellhole’s unexplored vastness to search for wonders and mysteries, Vincent finally thought he understood the excitement that had so energized Fernando. Maybe they would discover something interesting after all.
In Michella Town, the two men had received clothing, rations, tools and an overland vehicle rugged enough to withstand the dangers the planet was likely to throw at them. Their safety briefing turned out to be a two-day-long workshop during which they were bombarded with details about seismic activity, volcanic eruptions, dust clouds, toxic gas plumes vented from underground reservoirs, poisonous vegetation, indigenous insect analogs, pernicious parasites, and fungal infections that could get a foothold on human flesh. Possible storms fell into several categories: thunderstorms, windstorms, lightning, hail, freak blizzards, and tornadoes, in addition to the exotic smoke storms and static outbursts, colloquially called growlers, such as they’d experienced on their arrival day. And those were only the known hazards. Part of their job as topographical prospectors was to discover what else this planet had to offer, both good and bad.
Vincent had studied the information carefully, reviewing it for hours, though Fernando didn’t seem to be paying much attention. He could barely sit still as they prepared to depart in their well-provisioned Trakmaster.
Vincent offered to drive on the first shift, while his friend busied himself at the navigation screen, calling up charts of the many unmapped grid squares. Not surprisingly, the grid squares around Michella Town, along with the outlying industrial camps and mining outposts, ha
d already been adequately surveyed, but much of the landscape beyond that remained an enigma, covered by only large-scale satellite overflights.
Fernando scrolled the nav-screen to choose which place he wanted to explore first. “It’s all wide open. I’m not used to having so many lucrative possibilities.”
“We haven’t found anything yet.”
“We will. How could we not find anything in all that area?” Fernando increased the magnification, studied dry canyons, the sparkling smears of salty inland seas, river courses choked with odd alien vegetation. “What if we find monsters?”
“No monsters here. At least not big ones.” He was sure Fernando had heard that part of the briefing. “The asteroid impact killed all large indigenous life forms. Nothing bigger than small birds or rodents survived.”
“So the scientists say.” Fernando pouted at him. “Don’t spoil the mystery for me. This is an alien world, so there’s no guarantee what we might find. The local experts are rewriting their theories every day.”
While Vincent would have preferred to work their way methodically from one grid square to the next, Fernando selected a point at random, intrigued by the tortured, abandoned terrain. On reflection, one place seemed as good as another to Vincent, so they headed out to Fernando’s chosen coordinates.
Away from what passed for civilization, the rugged Trakmaster crossed hills covered with fibrous grasses. Vincent drove cautiously, ignoring his friend’s urging for greater speed and frequent side trips. He followed the procedure list from the exploration office. They stopped several times, and Vincent dutifully took images and botanical samples from knobby shrubs covered with plate-like lavender leaves. The heavy vehicle splashed through a stone-lined stream choked with rubbery algae.
The grid square that had intrigued Fernando was badlands terrain, ash and mud that had piled up in multicolored layers during the postimpact upheaval. Centuries of wind and rain had carved the mounds into fantastic shapes. From the vehicle’s high cab, Fernando used the built-in imagers to take plenty of panoramic images, along with several unnecessary ones of Vincent at work.
By early afternoon they ground the Trakmaster to a halt beside a sheer wall of exposed rock. Vincent thought it looked interesting. “The General wants hands-on samplings. Let’s see what’s out there.”
“Sure, I’m ready to stretch my legs.” Fernando opened the hatch and emerged, wandering around the vehicle, while Vincent pitched their self-erecting tent so they could spend the night. Ready to go, they took grid maps, imagers, and tools, activated the vehicle’s locator transponder, and then ventured into the widening arroyos, weaving their way through unusual hoodoos and rock formations.
Fernando turned around and smiled. “Look at that.” Vincent didn’t see what had captured his friend’s interest, but the other man pointed at the ground. “Your footprints and mine. This is an unexplored sector. We could be the first human beings ever to walk here. That isn’t something you can say anywhere in the Crown Jewels.”
They explored side canyons where the vertical walls had sloughed away to expose strata studded with clumps of bones, empty exoskeletons, preserved native insects each the size of a fist, remains of animals both large and small.
“I bet the General would pay for these fossils!” Fernando exclaimed.
Vincent used tools from his pack to chip out specimens for the xenobiologists back in Michella Town. “These creatures must have been buried in the eruptions and mudslides.” After recording exactly how the fossils were positioned in the rock wall, he extracted a bony lump that might have been something as delicate as a bird. Moving down the wall, he brushed away caked mud to expose a massive bone more than a meter in length, but he found no other parts of the animal. “Maybe it’s a trash heap. Could be the aliens ate those big creatures.”
“Or the big creatures ate them.”
After they finished gathering specimens, Vincent looked up to see an unusual display of dark helical clouds, like ribbons of rain twisted in spirals high overhead. “Do you remember any pattern like that from our briefing?”
Fernando took images of the clouds, but an uneasy Vincent activated the locater that would guide them back to the Trakmaster. “Maybe we should hurry. I’d rather be close to shelter if that turns into a storm.”
Geometrical-hail showers began to fall before they reached the vehicle. Sharp ice crystals pelted them, bouncing off the ground or sticking in the mud. Vincent and Fernando began running, yelling with good humor as they spotted their camp ahead. The hail picked up in intensity and size, and Fernando yelped as a particularly large shard struck him on the back of the head. They raced each other back to the tent and dove under the resilient overhang. Sputtering and gasping, they wiped their faces and hair, then sat inside the shelter, staring at the furor of the sparkling storm.
As the falling crystals drummed on the fabric, Vincent double-checked the seals; he hoped the tent would hold.
Fernando lay back, kicked up his feet, and drew a deep, satisfied breath. “Isn’t this a great job, all by ourselves, seeing amazing things? Much better than plucking weeds or dusting off vineyards. I’ve always dreamed about doing something like this.”
“That wasn’t what you told me aboard the passenger pod.”
“A man can have more than one dream, can’t he? I’ve proved that again and again.”
“So why did you come to Hellhole in the first place? Tell the truth this time.”
A dismissive shrug. “This seemed like the perfect place to go.”
“Hellhole is never ‘the perfect place to go.’ What’s your real story?”
“Oh, come now, there’s always a silver lining, even if it’s tarnished. My whole life I’ve rolled with the punches from one interest to the next, one dream to another. If you want lightning to strike, you put out a lot of lightning rods.”
“And this is where you came to seek your fortune? I take it Hellhole wasn’t your first choice.”
“Well, I started out on Vielinger, then moved to Marubi, then Sonjeera. My initial idea was to start a restaurant – everyone needs to eat, right? How could it fail?” Fernando described how he had convinced investors to help him establish the restaurant, but he didn’t know much about managing a business, and the place went bankrupt within a year. “I tried my best, but things like that happen. My investors lost all their money, but I lost all that hard work. It hurt me as much as it hurt them, so I don’t understand why the investors were so angry with me. That’s just the way it goes.”
On another planet, Fernando next decided to open a clothing store. “Everyone has to wear clothes, right? How could it fail?” He acquired a different group of investors, but he chose a poor location for the shop and carried the wrong selection for that area; though he greeted his customers with great aplomb and enthusiasm for each garment choice, he made very little profit. The store closed its doors within seven months, and Fernando had to leave quickly, fleeing from the furious investors.
Relaxing inside the tent with the hail shower continuing outside, Fernando made a disgusted sound. “I don’t understand what I was supposed to do about that. Weren’t we all partners? It was a team effort, and the team failed. I wasn’t the only one responsible. But they didn’t see it that way. They blamed me.” He shook his head. “Blame is just a festering sore for people who can’t move on.”
And so Fernando had moved on – several times – and finally reached a point where he had to leave the Crown Jewels far behind, and quickly. “But I look at this new stage in my life as uncovering possibilities. The Deep Zone worlds are wild, untamed, and unexplored. They need an ambitious person like me. I’ll do fine here.”
“But why Hellhole?” Vincent asked. “There are more pleasant DZ worlds to choose from.”
Fernando shook more glittering moisture from his wavy, brown hair. “Why should I go where all the other rainbow-chasers are? Give me a planet that’s full of opportunities. And this is just the place.”
“If you s
ay so.”
An hour later, the storm abated. The two men emerged to see a pounded and washed landscape. Vincent drew a deep breath of the clean scent of ozone. Around them, the caked sedimentary ground appeared to be covered with diamonds, while mist rose from the evaporating hail.
As Fernando trudged off to relieve himself, the crystals crunched under his feet. Vincent pointed a thumb back toward the Trakmaster. “Why not use the reclamation closet?”
The other man just gave him a sour look. “You don’t understand the freedom of the outdoors.”
Fernando went around an outcropping and descended into an arroyo, while Vincent returned to the vehicle, tallied the images that had been taken that day, and used the satellite connection to upload them to the survey office in Michella Town. Although he didn’t have his friend’s enthusiasm, Vincent was reasonably content. He had come here under bad circumstances, but he could tolerate this after all. He’d make a new life for himself, exactly as Fernando said . . .
Just then, his friend came running back to the campsite, yelling and waving his hands. His fly was still open. “You won’t believe it! An alien creature. It was huge – the size of an ox, but it moved like a panther!”
Vincent frowned. “That’s not even a good joke. There’s nothing but fossils around here.” He waved a hand at the barren landscape. “Look at this place. Nothing that large could live out here.”
“It’s not a joke! I saw it with my own eyes. A big animal, just on top of the ridge back there. Could be a predator. What weapons do we have?”
“We don’t have any weapons. What would we shoot at? There are no indigenous predators. Nothing bigger than a rodent, remember.”
“Tell that to the monster I just saw. Unbelievable! We’re all alone out here in a wild environment, and the General gives us nothing to defend ourselves with? What was he thinking?”
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