The Trakmaster rumbled across the crater floor, and ahead they finally spotted the three big vehicles and the camp the religious group had set up – the ruins of a camp, Antonia realized with a sinking feeling. The prefabricated shelters were battered hideously, the tents had collapsed. The abandoned Trakmasters looked as if they had been pounded by a meteor storm. She saw colorful scraps of polymer walls and tarpaulins, now covered in soot.
Approaching cautiously, Devon shone the vehicle’s front lights into the smoky pall. When he ground to a halt at the edge of the empty camp, they both stared. The area was still, silent, holding its breath.
“I don’t see anyone,” Antonia said.
Devon drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly before saying, “We may be too late.” He opened the Trakmaster’s hatch and motioned for her to join him. “But I’m not going back to my mother without answers. Come with me to help keep watch. And be careful. If you see anything unusual, let me know right away. Don’t investigate it yourself.”
“Then we’d better stick together.”
Together, they wandered through the eerie ruined camp, finding tools, shredded clothes, battered bins, broken pieces of camp equipment. “These people came here a month ago,” Antonia said, “but this place looks like it’s been abandoned for centuries.”
Devon pressed his lips together, studying details, running possibilities through his mind. “One good storm could account for this . . . but it doesn’t look like it was caused by a storm. It’s something else.”
He crunched along and overturned a small, pitted metal box with his toe. “Sometimes these fanatical groups do strange things. A couple of years ago a guru and his cult stripped themselves naked and stood out in the middle of a growler, claiming they wanted to feel the energy of God. They felt it all right. The only survivor lasted a week in the hospital with severe burns over eighty per cent of his body. The others were just skeletons covered by slabs of cooked flesh.”
The group’s three off-road vehicles sat near one another in various stages of disrepair; the lead Trakmaster slumped on collapsed treads. Jumbled piles of pocked lava boulders formed dikes nearby.
Standing next to the nearest vehicle, Devon ran his fingers over the dimpled surface. Some of the impacts had cut entirely through the hull, leaving ragged holes. The sealant strips around the windows and door hatch were gone, and the cab’s windows had fallen in. He opened the hatch to discover that the interior had been stripped as well. The upholstery on the passenger seats was nothing more than a few frayed remnants. “Something sure tore this up.”
Behind the base of one of the seats, Antonia found a fragment of bone.
Devon’s well-toned face grew grim and his eyes narrowed when she showed him. He held the ivory fragment between his fingers, while scanning the interior of the Trakmaster. “Even a high-velocity abrasive storm can’t blow hard enough to scour flesh from bones inside a vehicle.”
Antonia felt sick to her stomach and her tension heightened. She had spent years looking over her shoulder for supposed government assassins, and then she’d been fearful of Jako pursuing her. This danger seemed much less personal, but even more deadly.
“Let’s take a quick look around the camp and inside the other two Trakmasters. There’s got to be some kind of clue.” His voice cracked, and he made a show of clearing his throat. “Stay close to me, and alert. Very alert.”
The remnants of the prefab shelters contained only scraps of light blue cloth and a few more bone fragments. Antonia picked up a pipe from one of the larger tent supports. “Devon, this looks like it’s been chewed.”
Inside the lead Trakmaster, they discovered an unusual object composed of strange curves; its oily, obsidian-like surface was studded with reflective crystalline patches. The object gave off an eerie flowing sensation, an exotic sense of alienness. Devon picked it up, acting studiously detached in an obvious effort to hide his nervousness from her. “The General collects alien artifacts that pop up now and then, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” He frowned at the relic.
Antonia felt skittish, looking around at the distant scarlet glow of fresh lava. Her eyes stung from the sulfurous vapors in the air. “We should take that and go back home. We’re not forensic archaeologists, and I doubt we can figure out exactly what happened here.”
“You’re right. The General will have to send a larger team if he wants to get to the bottom of this.” His voice sounded tight, though he clearly didn’t want to alarm her. “And it is my job to keep you safe. I promised.”
Antonia normally would have insisted that she could keep herself safe, but Devon knew a lot more about the real dangers of Hellhole. “All right,” she said. “Let’s document this, then get out of here.”
After taking a series of images of the ruined camp and marking its location, they picked their way through the rubble back toward their Trakmaster, carrying the unusual alien artifact with them. They moved at a quick pace.
Antonia turned as the strange silence of the dead camp began to throb with a resonant subsonic hum that grew to a furious buzzing. Shocked, the two of them tried to locate the source of the sound. Moraines of gray-black rock from the old pyroclastic flow formed barriers on all sides, sharp and fragile rock piles that would have been a nightmare to traverse on foot.
A cloud of black insects wafted up from the shadows in the rocks, swirling like smoke. “What are those?” Antonia cried.
The swarm curved in the air and darted toward them.
“Never seen them before – but I’m not taking any chances. Come on!” Devon grabbed her hand, and they raced toward the Trakmaster. All scientific curiosity evaporated as the first of the hard-shelled insects struck them. Latching onto Antonia’s arms and neck, the bugs began to slash with razor-sharp mandibles.
Although bugs landed on him as well, Devon swatted some of them off Antonia and pushed her ahead of him so she could reach the vehicle first. “Get inside!” The cab’s hatch was partly open, and she slid through the gap. Devon leaped inside after her as a handful of outlier insects swirled around them. Working together, she and Devon strained to seal the hatch, but a last spurt of ravenous bugs slipped in. From outside, Antonia heard a sound like shotgun pellets peppering the hull. Swarming beetles smashed themselves against the reinforced windshield and hammered the sides of the Trakmaster.
Dozens of the hungry insects buzzed about inside the cab, and Antonia dealt with several that bit into her arms and neck. She knocked them away and smashed them against hard surfaces with the side of her fist; another landed on Devon’s back, and she slapped it aside and crushed it on the dashboard.
“I’ll take care of these. Just get us moving – go!” A bug flew at her face, and she swatted it out of the air. Antonia couldn’t stop thinking of the other three battered vehicles, the scraps of shredded upholstery, the fragments of chewed bone.
The high-horsepower engine was already running, and Devon accelerated. The rugged tracks spat loose dirt and broken stones, grabbing for traction as the heavy vehicle lurched over bumpy terrain toward the steep crater wall. The native bugs continued to smack into the windshield with such force that they left tiny crazed divots.
Antonia heard more buzzing, watched two beetles crawl through the ventilation screens. “Devon, the air intakes!”
Without taking his eyes from the path ahead so he could keep them moving, he worked controls with his left hand. “There, sealed off the outside source.” Antonia wondered how long the block would last.
In the rear imager, she saw that they were pulling away from the cloud of bugs, but thousands might still be clinging to the outer hull, chewing and scuttling. So many had already splattered on the windshield it was hard to see the path ahead, but Devon raced along, nevertheless.
Antonia moved about the vehicle’s interior, methodically dispatching the straggler insects. When she was finished, panting and bleeding from numerous bites, Devon said, “Thanks. Not bad for a newbie. I hate to ask you this, but
could you gather some specimens and put them in a container? Maybe someone in Helltown can ID them.”
Antonia scratched at the stinging bites on her arms. “I guess we know what happened to the Children of Amadin. I thought indigenous life forms couldn’t digest Terran proteins?”
“They didn’t have to digest us.” Devon looked down at his bleeding bites. “All they had to do was chew and keep chewing until there was nothing left.”
32
The Diadem was no help at all. Even when Keana promised to do whatever her mother wanted, Michella refused to lift a finger on Louis’s behalf. “The matter is closed.” The old woman brushed the conversation aside and moved on to important things.
But Keana would not be so immediately dismissed. “Louis doesn’t deserve this! Admit it, Mother. His only real crime was loving me!”
“What he has or hasn’t done is irrelevant. Thanks to your scandalous actions, the Crais family is mortally offended, and you’ve left me a stinking mess to deal with. No one feels sorry for a man who corrupted the daughter of the Diadem. And you, Keana, are an embarrassment to your family. You have a role to play, even if it’s just window dressing. Now be a dutiful princess and stop drawing unwanted attention to yourself.”
It was the wrong thing to say to her. “Then put me in prison, too. Exile me along with Louis. I doubt Bolton would even care!”
Michella looked impatient. “There are bigger issues at stake than you realize – noble families jockeying for power, the trading of favors, the machinations of strong lords against waning families – and you played right into their hands. We’re talking about the balance of power in the Crown Jewels, and all you can think about is silly romance?”
Though Keana left, she did not give up. She took the extraordinary step of contacting a Sonjeeran attorney on Louis’s behalf. In order to pay the legal fees, in room after room she emptied her cabinets of heirloom jewelry and brought the whole pile to Buxton Trombie in Council City. The expression on the lawyer’s face told her it would be enough to pay for the most extravagant defense.
An aged man with impeccably groomed gray hair, Trombie listened as Keana explained the desperate situation. “During the Reading of the Charges on Vielinger, Louis had no legal protection. The magistrates made up their minds ahead of time – it was so obvious. And now he’s being brought back to Sonjeera for sentencing. He may be here already, but no one will tell me anything!”
The lawyer cleared his throat as if preparing to give an opening argument. “First off, Princess, the magistrates determined the evidence was overwhelming, and by law, he was not allowed to present a defense.” He blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. “In legal matters, one must be careful with details.”
Keana thought he was missing the main point. “This has nothing to do with justice – it’s a conspiracy. The Riominis want to take over his holdings on Vielinger! I have it on good authority that the three magistrates judging his case are in Riomini employ.”
She expected Trombie to be offended; instead, he seemed dismissive. “You are certainly correct, Princess. Lord de Carre got himself into quite an untenable situation and let his own planet slip away. If memory serves, he missed several important votes in Council and failed to properly administer the iperion facilities under his authority. His son was fortunate that the lord shouldered the burden of the charges, otherwise the magistrates would have imprisoned both of them.”
Keana’s instinct was to shout in indignation and claim that the charges were false, but she couldn’t deny that she had distracted Louis from attending Council meetings. Caught up in love and happiness after so many years of being alone, Louis had lost his appetite for political maneuvering when he’d given his heart to her. But since the arrest, Keana had done some legal research. “The question, Mr Trombie, is what can we do about it? We have to free Louis from this trap.”
“Oh, I suspect we’ll have little effect, whatever we do.”
“I want you to expose the corruption to the whole Constellation. There’ll be a public outcry for justice.”
Trombie regarded her as if she were a naïve child, which angered Keana even more. “There’s simply no point to it, my Lady. Your affair with Lord de Carre is common knowledge, and the people won’t sympathize with you.”
Keana barely restrained herself from leaping to her feet. Did he not understand the urgency? How could she stir this man to action? “Can we file an appeal? Reverse the decision? Submit papers to request clemency?”
“I’ve read the decision, and it has been on the news reports. I am sorry to say, Princess, that everything seems to be in order. Lord de Carre’s formal sentencing takes place here tomorrow.” Trombie pushed away the jewels Keana had brought. “I have represented the Duchenet family for years, and therefore when you made your appointment with me, I was obligated to contact your mother. It seems that she has other ideas about the situation.”
The door to the inner office swung open and Diadem Michella entered. From the sour frown on her face, it was obvious she had been eavesdropping on the whole conversation. With Keana too astonished to speak, the old woman swooped into a chair and took charge of the meeting. “You are misinformed, daughter. The judges who convicted Lord de Carre are not in the employ of the Riominis. They are, in fact, on my payroll, and they rule as I tell them to.”
Buxton Trombie shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Princess, I advise you to drop your attempts on behalf of Lord de Carre. Your case has no merit.”
Michella placed a claw-like ring-studded hand on her daughter’s arm. “You must face certain realities, dear. Political realities. I view this as an opportunity to teach you by letting you live with the consequences of your bad decisions.”
Keana found her mother’s touch repulsive. “I love Louis – can’t you understand that? Please. If you grant him clemency, I will do whatever you want!” She realized she sounded like a whining child, but didn’t care.
Michella frowned, as if reconsidering. “I didn’t think you had it in you. I thought you would flutter away and forget about it soon enough, but now I see how determined you are.” Keana responded with flashing eyes and pulled her arm free. “All right, something more lenient might be arranged for the man . . . a prison term of a few years, followed by exile to the Deep Zone. Complete forfeiture of his family holdings goes without saying . . . Even as Diadem, I can do nothing more.”
Keana took several deep breaths. “At least let me see Louis. I’ll tell him what you said. He’ll be willing to go to the Deep Zone, I promise.”
She clucked her tongue. “It would not be seemly for the Diadem’s daughter to visit him in prison – a disgraced nobleman and a convicted criminal.”
Keana fought back tears. Louis must feel so alone! Trombie gave a sober nod, tried to intercede. “It might be done discreetly, Eminence.”
Michella finally showed a glimmer of compassion. Fidgeting in her chair, clearly not pleased, she nodded. “All right. I will arrange for you to visit him briefly in his cell just before his sentencing. However, I want no gawking observers, no one who can repeat gossip.”
“Thank you, Mother!” It was the tiniest hint of hope, but the best news Keana had had in days.
Following her mother’s instructions, Keana arrived at the east entrance of an imposing gray rock structure the following morning. Horned-gax carvings protruded from fascia and corners; according to legend, the icons warded off evil forces. A shiver ran down her back. Before today, Keana had never been to Sonjeera’s highest-security prison, but she was delighted and relieved to have this opportunity to comfort poor Louis.
She wore nondescript garments to hide her identity – and who would expect the Diadem’s daughter in this part of the city? After she whispered to one of the guards, he led Keana up a short stairway. She looked both ways, smelled the odd oppressive mustiness of the building, but realized with relief that at least Louis was not in one of the lower-level cells reserved for heinous criminals. Instead, the guard escorted her
to a spacious wing with individual rooms for upper-class prisoners. Perhaps Louis was being treated well after all.
The gruff guard showed no sympathy for any of the detainees, nor did he seem to care who Keana was. “Lord de Carre has been left alone for the day, so that he may contemplate his sentencing without distraction. I have orders to grant you complete privacy.” The guard motioned her inside.
Not caring what the uniformed man thought, she hurried into the finely appointed detention room and heard the door shut behind her. Louis must be miserable, but she could at last offer him a little encouragement; she would do whatever she could for him. “Louis, my love – I’m here!” She ran forward but didn’t see him. What if her mother had played a cruel trick on her? What if Louis wasn’t here after all? The Diadem had already kept so much from her; what if her mother was simply trying to keep Keana busy chasing red herrings, while Louis was whisked away to some other place?
Her heart contracted at the memory of how forlorn he had looked during the Reading of the Charges, humiliated, broken. With her love, though, Keana could give him strength. They would go into exile together, live in quiet anonymity on some Deep Zone world.
But he did not answer her call. “Louis?” They wouldn’t have much time together today, and she wanted to cherish every moment of it.
The bathroom door was closed, so she called again, knocking hard. When he still did not respond, she felt a heavy dread in her stomach and threw open the door in desperation.
Lord Louis de Carre lay sprawled on the floor in an unnatural position. He still wore his trousers, but his shirt hung on a hook beside the door. A lake of dark blood pooled all around his body.
“Louis!” she screamed. “Guard, I need a doctor!”
But the blood was cold. The body was cold.
She knelt in the red pool, grabbed Louis by the shoulders and hugged him, held him. Gaping wounds ran the length of his wrists. “Guard!” She struggled to wrap towels around both wrists to stem the flow of blood, but the bleeding had stopped some time ago. “My darling, stay with me! Don’t go!”
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