Hellhole by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson Page B

dress to float in the pond.
    Afterward, as they lay naked and spent from making love, he looked up at the willows and complained about having to do actual business while here on Sonjeera. “You so easily make me lose track of time, my sweet – not just the hours, but the days as well. I’ve just realized I’m supposed to be at an important vote regarding Vielinger this afternoon, or maybe it was this morning.”
    She sighed, running a fingertip down his chest. “Politics. Do you really have to go?”
    “I’ve probably already missed it, and I’d much rather be here with you, where I can forget all that nonsense.”
    She brightened. “No one will notice you’re not there?”
    “Oh, they’ll notice all right. They’ll make another attempt to weaken the de Carre family, and scheming noblemen have been trying to do that for centuries. Don’t worry, they never succeed.”
    “Your son is managing the iperion operations,” she said. “Everything is in good hands.”
    “The best.” He smiled at her. “The nobles will argue and they’ll vote, and then they’ll argue again. Nothing ever changes. The Riominis keep trying to take my planet away from me, with one scheme after another. Today will be no different, whether or not I’m there. And I’d much prefer to spend the afternoon in your delightful company.”
    She laughed, knowing the Council of Lords would be upset by Louis’s lack of seriousness. Let them huff and puff!
    A troubled shadow crossed his face, though. “Of late, however, their efforts have crossed a line. Someone is sabotaging my iperion mines, making Cristoph look incompetent, though he can’t possibly be to blame. Some of the citizens are even angry at me! How can that be? I have always been concerned about the welfare of my people. I think I’ll make a statement in open council session one of these days, just to set the record straight.”
    Keana wanted to do something to help. “Would you like me to talk with my mother about it?”
    Louis looked at her with a sad, endearing expression. “No offense, my darling, but your job is to grace Sonjeera’s social events with your presence and be decorative, not to twist arms.”
    The remark stung, but Keana could not dispute the truth.

 
9
    T o the untrained eye, the cavern conditions might have appeared normal, but Cristoph de Carre knew otherwise. Tense mine operators and engineers in sealed worksuits hurried about their tasks, supervising remote-controlled machines. Extraction skimmers hovered over the blue-veined walls, peeling off raw iperion without damaging its delicate structure. The sensitive mineral was unstable before processing and had to be mined in micro-thin layers and kept very cold, otherwise it would be rendered useless for stringline purposes. The skimmers looked like fat bees with bulbous refrigerated storage compartments on their bodies to hold the harvested iperion.
    “A few more veins and this part of the mine will be played out, my Lord.” Lanny Oberon raised his voice to be heard above the drone of the extraction machines. He adjusted a setting below the faceplate of his sealed suit, shutting off the taslight on top of his helmet.
    Cristoph did the same with his borrowed work suit. Garish work lights and various improvised fixtures gave the cavern plenty of illumination. “Then we’ll just have to look harder for other veins, Lanny. Vielinger can’t possibly be wrung dry.” De Carre family fortunes had depended on the mines for centuries, and even the most conservative estimates suggested the supplies would last for another two decades at least. Still, it was cause for him to be concerned about his family’s future, knowing that the boom days of the previous century were past.
    Cristoph stood with the mining foreman on an observation platform that vibrated underfoot. On the cavern floor below, one worker rolled a portable tool cart up to a control panel that flashed a red error light. “It’s still profitable