Hellhole: Awakening Read Free Page A

and out to the far-flung Deep Zone. Turlo and Sunitha Urvancik flew the small ship, maintaining the iperion path that made hyperfast space travel possible.
    Before throwing in their lot with the General, the two linerunners had always done their lonely work without drawing any attention. Now that the DZ had declared independence from the Constellation, though, the Urvanciks had to slip back to Sonjeera like thieves in the night. If they succeeded in this intelligence-gathering mission, they would help save Hellhole, perhaps even bring down the Diadem’s government.
    “And that wouldn’t make me shed a single tear,” Sunitha said.
    Turlo saw the hard expression on his wife’s face. Sunitha had large, dark eyes and dusky skin, a beauty that had not diminished as she grew older; her hair was still deep black, with only a few shadows of gray. “Nothing will bring Kerris back,” he said. “But at least it might help the scars fade.”
    At the beginning of the General’s earlier rebellion, their only son had believed the Diadem’s propaganda and joined the Army of the Constellation. He considered himself a patriot. But in the war, after Kerris witnessed unspeakable things, his initial patriotism turned to disenchantment and then to outright shock. He had died a “hero,” according to the Diadem’s official consolation note, but Turlo and Sunitha learned later that their son had been killed in an accident caused by the incompetence of his own comrades. The Diadem’s note had placed the blame squarely on Adolphus, keeping the blood off her own hands.
    Now Turlo believed Kerris would applaud their decision to side with the General. If only their son were still alive, he could join them in the fight for true freedom.…
    “I just want life to get back to normal,” Sunitha said.
    The stringline timer sent a signal chime through the cockpit, and the two became all business. Once they acquired the information from the loyalist spy, the General could finalize his defenses and set a trap before the Army of the Constellation came to destroy him.
    Sunitha leaned forward to verify their position as space traffic increased on the outskirts of the Sonjeera system. “Need to make sure we’re not too close to the planet, not too far out.” All the Constellation’s stringlines converged at the central Sonjeera hub, but any vessel on the interdicted Hellhole line would arouse immediate suspicion. Without giving Turlo time to brace himself, she disengaged the Kerris from the iperion path and they coasted in toward the capital planet.
    Officially, the two linerunners had been “lost” on one of their routes, written off as dead. If they were discovered now, secretly working for the rebel General, the Diadem’s torturers would make even their son’s lingering radiation-poisoning death seem easy.
    The best idea, Turlo decided, was to avoid getting caught in the first place.
    Once the Kerris was off the stringline, Turlo activated the spacedrive, nudging them toward Sonjeera. He merged into the flow of traffic converging on the planet. They already had a fake ID beacon, which identified the Kerris as nothing more than a small cargo distributor. Nothing of interest to the authorities.
    Sonjeera’s orbit was crowded with transfer stations and holding matrices for cargo boxes. Some trade items and raw materials were delivered via downboxes to Sonjeeran markets, but the majority were shuffled aboard other stringline haulers to be delivered throughout the Crown Jewel worlds.
    Because all Constellation travel and commerce had to go through the bottleneck, the orbiting complex was enormous. Even with the Deep Zone lines now embargoed, the hub was a hornet’s nest of confusion. The disorder worked to Turlo’s advantage as he received clearance and an assigned dock from a crisp, impatient-sounding woman. “We may as well use our last Constellation credits,” Turlo said. “I want to pick up a case of Sonjeeran brandy. We can sell it at