Though Digby privately agreed wholeheartedly with Wang’s statement that Jessop was, and Digby could quote verbatim from the investigating tribunal’s records, “a mentally unstable psychopath who was a disgrace to Kraa,” he would never be so stupid as to say so publicly. Sadly for Wang, his defense-that he had been very drunk and had meant it only as a joke-had cut no ice with the tribunal. Their unsympathetic view, supported by precedents stretching back to the early years of the Hammer of Kraa, was that alcohol promoted the truth; it did not confuse or obscure it. After a trial lasting all of two and a half minutes and with his character witnesses left outside the tribunal chamber uncalled and unheard-Wang had managed to find two friends not only brave but stupid enough to stand up in public on his behalf-the tribunal did what it was paid to do and found him guilty before passing his case for confirmation of sentence up to the Supreme Tribunal for the Preservation of the Faith.
Two minutes after his sentencing hearing closed, Wang was on his way to a ten-year stay in Hell without the chance to say goodbye to his wife and three children.
But Digby had no doubts, none at all, that Wang would do an outstanding job. By Kraa, he would have plenty of incentives, not the least of which was Digby’s firm promise that he would never have to return to Hell again. But it seemed to Digby that he would have to point out to Chief Councillor Merrick that people like that couldn’t be trusted, and then it would be obvious that Digby would be best used making sure that Wang and his crew of xenobiologists, xenoecologists, atmospheric scientists, logistics engineers, and the rest-amazing who ended up on Hell, thought Digby-behaved themselves. In the best interests of the project as a whole, of course.
A small security incident would do the trick, Digby decided. Nothing too serious but enough to encourage Merrick to leave him where he was until the Feds came and put an end to the whole lunatic scheme, as they surely would. Of that he had absolutely no doubt.
Five minutes later and much happier in his mind, he was safely onboard the Councillor class light scout Myosan, the small starship marked out as one of the chief councillor’s personal flotilla by a titanium hull polished to a mirror finish, by gold trim, and by its massive Kraa sunburst symbols, also in gold.
As Digby gave the orders to drop from the transfer station and clear Commitment as soon as possible, he settled back in a comfortable armchair in his private suite, facing the holovid display that was taking feeds from the hull-mounted holocams. Myosan was one of the fastest starships in the Hammer order of battle, and if all went well, it would have Digby safely docked at the Hell transfer station in time for breakfast the next day.
The telephone handset embedded in the arm of his chair chimed softly.
“Digby.”
“This is Commander Williams. Welcome back, sir.”
“Thank you, Commander. Always a pleasure to be back onboard the Myosan.”
“Thank you, sir. We have received our departure clearance and will be unberthing in ten minutes’ time. Allowing thirty minutes to maneuver clear of the transfer station, we will leave Commitment innerspace at 21:43. The microjump is scheduled for 22:20, and it will take just under five seconds to get to Hell.”
“How far, Commander?”
“A fraction under 6 billion kilometers, sir. All being well, we’ll be docking at 04:00 tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Commander. For obvious reasons, I’ll stay up for the jumps, but then I’ll turn in. When we arrive, I’d like you to arrange a shuttle to transfer me to be at Hell Central. I have a meeting with Prison Governor Costigan at 08:30.”
“Won’t be a problem, sir. Just call the duty steward on 236 to let him know when you’d like to eat or if there’s anything else you need. Otherwise, we’ll leave you in peace.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
Late that evening, Michael had the watch. Heart in mouth, he acknowledged Mother’s report of a distinctive brilliant ultraviolet flash as yet another starship arrived in-system.
Twenty seconds later, the passive sensors had collected the data Mother needed to categorize the new arrival as military, possibly a light scout but more likely a courier.
Sick at heart, Michael agreed with Mother that it was not worth waking the captain for. He just wondered how much longer he could keep his last few tattered shreds of hope alive. Where the hell was the Mumtaz?
Sunday, September 13, 2398, UD
Hell Planet (Revelation-II) Innerspace
Digby watched the holovid with interest as the little inter-moon transfer shuttle, a modified light utility lander only 20 meters in length with a smooth white plasteel hull punctured only by the obligatory brilliant orange flashing anticollision lights, two mass driver nozzles, maneuvering reaction control jets, and landing gear, pushed away from the planetary transfer station.
Once it was clear, the shuttle changed vector sharply for its run in toward Hell Central, the twelfth and, at 1,570 kilometers in diameter, the largest of Hell’s moons and the nerve center from which Prison Governor Costigan managed Hell’s only real reason to exist: its network of driver mass plants. Digby had always considered the naming scheme very unoriginal. He had an enduring love of Shakespeare and inevitably would have turned to him for inspiration if faced with the challenge of naming twenty-two moons. But there were no Juliets or Violas, Desdemonas or Cordelias, here. Nothing about Hell was appealing enough for anyone to want to name any bit of it after any person, character, or place he or she loved or cared for.
So Hell-1,-2,-3, all the way up to Hell-22 was all the naming the moons of Revelation-II would get.
As the shuttle pulled away, the bright arc lights of the transfer station quickly coalesced behind them into a single brilliant point of orange-white light, and darkness rapidly took over. The Revelation system’s star, an orange-red dwarf, was too small, too dim, and at 5.9 billion kilometers too far away to be of any value as a source of light. Forty-six thousand kilometers below the shuttle, more sensed than seen, discernible only as a black circle cut out of the stars that hung in curtains on all sides, was the massive bulk of Hell-Revelation-II-itself, a U-Class planet with the usual ragingly violent methane, hydrogen, and helium atmosphere and precious little else worth talking about. With gravity of 107 percent of Earth normal, it had been able to host a small scattering of research stations staffed by a handful of brave souls but nothing else.
There had been a short-lived attempt dreamed up by some business expert in the Department of Economic Affairs to operate a tourist center in the vain hope that the cost of supporting the Hell penal system would come down if enough tourists could be persuaded to defray the costs of supporting the hideously expensive Commitment-Hell shuttles.
Needless to say, the scheme had not worked, doomed by the unforgiving economics of getting people into the Hell system in the first place, down to the planet, and then back home again, not to mention the significant fact, ignored by the bureaucrats in their planning, that there was little worth seeing on Hell. Once you had seen one methane storm, you had seen them all, particularly as they all happened in the pitch dark of Hell’s permanent night. To cap it all, tourists were not at all keen on sharing their accommodations with criminals even if those criminals were securely held under lock and key.