Sia Frankov was a like-minded woman, and she and Tanja often got together on their respective planets, sharing a drink of the local alcoholic specialty, plotting their dreams, negotiating commercial alliances, anticipating a bright future for the Deep Zone. Tanja wished the damned military preparations would stop interfering with her commercial ambitions, but she also wanted to humiliate Diadem Michella after all the bitch had done.
Walfor used a powerful tractor ship to drag its towline of vessels that required stardrive engines from the Theser engineers. He seemed to enjoy operating the huge and unwieldy vessel so he could show off his piloting skills for her. Sitting next to Walfor on the command deck, Tanja smiled as she watched how smoothly he did it. And she would let him show off for her. Someday, they would be able to enjoy peace and she could think of romance; for now, she had to remain focused.
The cluster of vessels landed inside Eron’s massive crater. When ready, the six refurbished warships would return to help defend Candela.
It would have been far more efficient for the reclusive engineers to leave Theser, bring new equipment to Buktu, and work there, but they were adamant homebodies. Although Frankov was also frustrated by her recalcitrant workers she merely rolled her eyes the last time Tanja mentioned it. “I have tried, Tanja. But they are brilliant, and I’ve finally accepted that they won’t travel. It’s just the price I pay for their genius.”
Tanja wanted to see the strange engineers and deliver her ships to them, but she had another reason for coming to Theser as well. As part of her deal to share stringline costs with Sia Frankov, Tanja had agreed to take a difficult political prisoner off the administrator’s hands and keep her on Candela for safekeeping.
When the Deep Zone broke away from the Crown Jewels, three of the Constellation’s five territorial governors had been on Sonjeera and thus were cut off from their assigned worlds; Governor Goler from Ridgetop had thrown in his lot with the rebels. The last recalcitrant governor—a woman named Marla Undine—had been arrested on Theser and remained a political prisoner. But Sia Frankov didn’t know what to do with Undine and did not like having such a dangerous captive.
Tanja, though, had her own ideas.
As she and Walfor stepped off the ship at the bottom of the crater, a thin, elegant-looking woman in a business suit greeted them. Sia Frankov was accompanied by officers and soldiers of the Deep Zone Defense Force in blue-and-gold uniforms.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to land all those ships at once,” Frankov said. The wind in the bowl of the large crater whipped her long reddish hair. The Theser administrator gave Walfor a flirtatious gaze, then looked down the line of vessels that he had so smoothly set down, one after another.
“Barely broke a sweat,” Walfor said.
Tanja gave her friend a quick, warm embrace. Frankov said, “Would you like an early lunch?” By local time, it was late morning, with Theser’s sun only partly visible through a mist of low clouds above the crater.
Walfor grinned, but before he could agree, Tanja pressed, “We’d like to meet with the spacedrive engineers without delay. Could we have these ships moved to the fabrication center?”
“It’s always business first with you, Tanja,” Frankov said with an indulgent sigh. “If the Constellation withered away and left you without an enemy, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”
“If the Constellation withered away, I would find plenty of other things to do.”
The Theser administrator instructed one of her officers to have the ships moved, then she led her guests away from the spaceport. “But you still have to eat, and there’s no reason you can’t enjoy it. I know what kind of food you like. I already alerted the engineers that they have priority work, and I’ve had my chef prepare a nice meal. No delays, and no rudeness either. See? Everybody’s satisfied.”
Tanja forced herself to relax. “Sorry to sound so impatient, but I need to get Candela’s defenses in place. Every day, I expect—” She felt herself flushing, her muscles tensing. For all the terrible things the Constellation had already done, Tanja knew she had not yet seen the depths of what the Diadem might do. “I will be glad to have Governor Undine under my control, as a hostage and a bargaining chip.” She caught herself. “But I have no intention of bargaining.”
Frankov interrupted with a hard smile. “And for me it will be a relief to get rid of Undine. I can’t thank you enough for taking over as her host.”
“Host? That sounds a little more pleasant than what I have in mind.”
Frankov brushed the comment aside with a flippant laugh. “I’d rather not hear about it. Once you take the governor away from here, the Constellation won’t have any reason to pay attention to Theser. You’ll be in their sights, and I’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Walfor let out a snort as he walked between the two women. “You’re both expecting the Diadem to react rationally.”
“For security, we should just blow all the stringlines to Sonjeera,” Tanja grumbled. “Get it over with.”
Frankov chuckled. “And be cut off from the Crown Jewels for years after this little squabble is settled? I think not. I intend to act rationally, even if no one else does.”
“We can do without the Constellation,” Tanja insisted.
“Of course we can, but I’d rather not.”
After a quick lunch in the administrative banquet room, Frankov led her visitors to an all-terrain roller for climbing the steep road up the terraced slope of the crater wall.
The vehicle kicked up a cloud of dust as it switchbacked up an incline toward buildings that looked like a complex of monasteries. For arcane reasons the Theser engineers considered the crater sacred. As long as they get their job done and the ships finished, Tanja thought.
She and Walfor followed Frankov into the laboratory citadel. Tanja saw dirty couches and tables that had not been cleaned for a long time; no one sat behind the reception desk, but she didn’t expect anyone to be there. This structure had been built by the old territorial government—an exorbitant expense paid for by draconian tribute demands—and it did not fit the personalities of the stardrive engineers. Nevertheless, they had sprawled into the unclaimed administrative space.
When no one came to greet them in the cavernous, dusty foyer, Frankov marched through a doorway in search of someone while Tanja and Walfor waited. And waited. They’d been through this irritating routine before. Not a very efficient way to fight a war! Now that she had her direct Candela-Theser stringline, she no longer needed to travel to this planet via the Hellhole hub, thereby saving days on each trip, but the planet-bound engineers still made the process needlessly difficult. Frankov claimed that she and Tanja would laugh about it one day, when all the turmoil was over.
Tanja couldn’t visualize when it would ever be over.
Finally, Frankov returned with a group of eight very tall men. Their hair was uniformly black, and their eyes pale brown. They wore gray jumpsuits smudged with dust and grease. The spacedrive engineers were all said to be from the same family, raised in a crater-rim settlement several kilometers from the city. They looked different from other Theser settlers; Tanja wondered if it might be due to inbreeding. The isolated specialists had gaunt faces and paunchy bellies.
“We don’t have much time for this,” said one of the men in a gravelly voice—Jaluka Vobbins, the only one who ever spoke with visitors.
“We know your time is valuable,” Walfor said in his best diplomatic voice.
“As is ours,” Tanja added. “There’s a war on.” These inflexible but brilliant scientists were the only way to get new stardrives in time, and the General needed the additional ships to bolster DZ defenses. She bit back her irritation and said, “So we would appreciate your help. General Adolphus has … requested … that you install new engines on the six vessels we just delivered, as soon as possible, so they can be stationed as defense ships.”
Vobbins looked sourly at his companions. “We already have projects in t
he works. New experiments.”
Tanja rolled her eyes in frustration, and Walfor spoke up, wearing a congenial smile. “An invasion from the Diadem would interrupt those projects permanently. And if you are all killed in a punitive action, then we’ll never get those ships. So if you don’t mind?”
Vobbins looked alarmed. How could the engineer be so oblivious to what was going on in the Deep Zone?
Sia Frankov said mildly, “They have a very good point, Jaluka.”
Vobbins looked at the other engineers, who nodded. “Very well, we choose to accept the request of General Adolphus. Now we shall return to work.” He bowed slightly, then turned his back and left, followed by the others.
“Maybe they’re following Sia’s example and acting rationally,” Tanja muttered with a trace of sarcasm. “For a change.”
* * *
Frankov drove the roller down the switchbacks to the city prison, a formidable structure at the base of the crater. “I expect you’ll find Governor Undine as unpleasant as I do,” Frankov said. “You are welcome to her company.”
Fiercely, and naïvely, loyal to the Crown Jewels, Governor Undine had refused to accept the new reality in the Deep Zone. When General Adolphus had unveiled his DZ stringline network and declared independence, Undine tried to rally the people of Theser, demanding their continued allegiance to Diadem Michella. But Adolphus supporters had been laying the groundwork for years, and the Deezees loathed the oppressive Constellation. Planetary Administrator Frankov had arrested Undine and locked her away so she could no longer interfere. The people of Theser applauded the decision, since Governor Undine was not well liked among the frontier people she scorned.
Undine was held in a cell within a maze arrangement of other cells delineated by a combination of metal bars and advanced electronics. “Theser has little need for maximum security prisons, but I took all the precautions I could,” Frankov explained.
“I doubt she could make a prison break,” Walfor said.
Frankov did not laugh off the comment. “I couldn’t be sure. Governor Undine has important contacts back in the Crown Jewels, and I didn’t want her thinking she had any chance of being rescued.”
Tanja saw the dour former governor sitting on a hard bench inside a yellow electronic containment field. The woman looked arrogant and bored, and Tanja felt an immediate antipathy for her: no compassion, only contempt. Marla Undine symbolized the excesses and corruption of the old government, the oppression of the DZ settlers. “I doubt anyone misses her terribly,” she said, making sure that the prisoner heard her.
Undine glanced at them, then looked away. “I don’t talk with traitors. Unless you’ve finally come to your senses and decided to free me.”
Tanja spoke to her friend, rather than addressing the prisoner, “Don’t worry, Sia. We’ll find suitable quarters for her on Candela. She is no longer your problem.”
Undine refused to rise from her seat. “You have no right to hold me. I don’t recognize your authority.”
“What you do or don’t recognize is irrelevant,” Walfor told her. “General Adolphus approved the transfer. We’re moving you to a secure location.”
Tanja grew impatient. “Secure, but not necessarily comfortable. If you won’t come with us willingly I’ll have you stunned, and we’ll haul you to Candela in the cargo hold.”
Glowering in defiance, Undine rose to her feet and went with them.
Sia Frankov let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Tanja. Someday I’ll return the favor.”
Tanja continued to stare at Marla Undine, seeing her as the symbol of all the damage the Constellation had done. “My pleasure,” she said in a tone that implied no joy at all.
17
The Constellation fleet was less than two days from planet Hallholme along the hyperfast stringline when alarms rattled through the ships.
Red Commodore Hallholme was already edgy; the passage seemed interminable, and he just wanted to get on with the fight. He was down in the simulation chambers watching a squadron of fighter pilots go through a mock bombing run in a scenario with General Adolphus entrenched on the ground in his Elba fortress. A second group of fighters completed a training mission, this time fighting—and winning—a space battle. Even though the simulation gave the General twice as many war vessels as he could possibly have, the Constellation fighters seized the new DZ stringline hub with very little effort. Victory after victory.
Major Bolton Crais had accompanied Escobar into the simulation nerve center, where the wall of segmented screens looked like a giant fly’s eye. Taking notes, Bolton identified crewmembers who made imaginative responses and noted their names. On the training screen, attack squadrons flew together in a bombing run like a well-coordinated swarm of hornets. Imaginary explosions flashed and sparkled while curls of smoke rose into the sky, leaving only a black crater where the rebel General had thought he was safe.
Just as the trainees scored a complete victory, however, the Diadem’s Glory lurched. Gravity spun from the horizontal deck to the walls, then back again like a wild pendulum. Sparks flew from control panels while foul-smelling smoke spurted from burning circuits. The lights went dark, then flickered back on at half strength. In some of the sim-chambers, the doors sealed and locked, trapping the soldiers inside. After a five-second delay, alarms droned throughout the PA system, drowning out the cheery loop of patriotic music.
Thrown to his knees on the deck, Escobar scrambled to regain his feet and his dignity. His gaze latched onto Bolton Crais. “What the hell was that, Major?”
“I’ve never experienced anything like it, sir.”
A fresh-faced young squadron leader crawled out of a sim-chamber, blinking in alarm. “Is this part of the exercise?”
A second fighter appeared beside him. “No, it’s real. The General must have launched something against us.”
“This is not part of the simulation,” Escobar said in his command voice. “We’re still two days away from the target, so I won’t give General Adolphus credit until I know what happened. Major Crais, come with me.” They took a tube lift and emerged onto the bridge.
Lieutenant Aura Cristaine was the officer on duty. She rose from the command chair. “I’ve been in contact with the stringline pilots high up on the framework, Redcom. All five haulers have disengaged from the stringline. Emergency measures activated.”
“Mechanical problems? On all five haulers?” Escobar was aghast. “How could anything go wrong? We’re just following the stringline.”
“Still checking, sir.” Lieutenant Cristaine looked harried. A few wisps of her straight brown hair had escaped from her regulation pinned-back style. She moved from station to station, looking at reports. “We lost the iperion path, and our haulers are drifting loose.”
Bolton’s brow furrowed. “At our speed of travel, if we broke loose from the stringline, we could have gone the length of a solar system before emergency deceleration stopped us.”
“Get Pilot Dar on the channel now,” Escobar said. “I want an explanation.”
The communications officer signaled the pilot of the giant hauler framework. During the emergency deceleration, two suspended warships had broken free of their docking clamps and tumbled out of the frameworks into space. In only a few seconds they had drifted hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart. Mayday signals came in from the two lost ships as they tried to find their way back to the stringline haulers. Cast loose, the five haulers had spread far apart as well. The comm channels lit up as numerous captains demanded explanations. Escobar muted them all until he had answers himself.
Finally, the pilot of their stringline hauler appeared on the screen. Suri Dar was a stocky old woman who rarely left her chamber atop the framework. She lifted both her hands, adding frantic birdlike gestures to her words. “If I had an answer for you, Redcom, I’d tell you,” she said, before Escobar could ask. “Automatic systems kicked in. Something happened after Substation Three. We just passed where Substation Four should be,
but … it’s not there. The stringline just ends. We’re off the damned iperion path!”
“How can a substation not be there?” Escobar said.
Bolton lowered his voice, leaning closer. “The answer is obvious—General Adolphus destroyed it. He severed the line after all.”
“That bastard!” Escobar said. Before the fleet launched from Sonjeera a fast drone had verified the integrity of the stringline—only a few days ago. “How could he cut himself off from the Crown Jewels? And right now?” He glowered at Crais, quick to cast blame. “Of course, since we took weeks to load and dispatch our fleet, he had plenty of time.” Escobar turned back to the screen. “And what does this mean, Pilot?”
Dar sat back, her wrinkled face like a prune from which too much moisture had been extracted. “What does it mean? You know how stringline travel works, sir—without an established iperion path we can’t use our superfast engines. We’d be flying blind at suicidal speed. Without the stringline, your hundred ships would have to disengage from the hauler frameworks and use regular faster-than-light spacedrives to get to Hallholme.”
Escobar clenched his hands, drew a deep breath. “FTL would take too long.”
Bolton said, “A couple of months, give or take, depending on where we are. But we don’t have near enough fuel to make that passage with FTL engines. It’s not an option.”
Gail Carrington spoke up, startling him. She had been so shadowy and silent, he hadn’t even noticed her standing on the bridge. “I’m not surprised the General did this, although I am disappointed. With his own DZ stringline network, he can still reach Sonjeera via some other Deep Zone world—unless he’s blown all fifty-four lines.”
“He would never do that!” Bolton cried.
“No reasonable man would. But that doesn’t answer the question.” Escobar turned back to Suri Dar. Unlike the skilled fighters he had just watched in the simulation chambers, stringline hauler pilots were little more than train engineers. They traveled back and forth along the clearly defined iperion lines, and the routes never varied. They did not maneuver; they could not go anywhere except forward and back. Therefore, the job did not attract exceptional applicants.
Hellhole Awakening Page 10