Hellhole

Brian Herbert is a New York Times bestselling science-fiction writer. As well as being the co-author of the new Dune novels, he is the author of the highly acclaimed
Sudanna, Sudanna
,
The Race for God
and
Prisoners of Arionn
. He has also written the
Timeweb Chronicles
and
Dreamer of Dune
, a Hugo Award-nominated biography of his father Frank Herbert.

Kevin J. Anderson has over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. As well as the ambitious space-opera series,
The Saga of Seven Suns
and his
Terra Incognita
fantasy trilogy, he has written numerous bestselling novels based on
Star Wars
and the
X-Files
. He has won, or been shortlisted for, science fiction’s highest awards and in 1977 he set the Guinness World Record for ‘largest single-author booksigning’. He lives in Colorado and is an avid hiker and mountain climber.

Visit
www.wordfire.com
and
www.dunenovels.com

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Dream Star, Inc. and Word Fire, Inc., 2010

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1998 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84737-993-1
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84737-426-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84737-994-8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by M Rules
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD

Brian: to Julie, Kimberly, and Margaux

Kevin: to Jonathan, Jessica, and Harrison

May your lives be filled with a universe of opportunities

For their help in the writing and preparation of this novel, we would like to express our gratitude to Tom Doherty at Tor Books, our editors Pat LoBrutto (Tor) and Maxine Hitchcock (Simon & Schuster UK), and our agent, John Silbersack. Kevin would like to thank Mary Thomson for her diligent transcription, and test readers Diane Jones and Louis Moesta. And, as with all our books, we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our wives, Janet Herbert and Rebecca Moesta Anderson, for their love and creative support.

I
t was the end of the rebellion, and this day would either make or break the freedom fighters. General Tiber Maximilian Adolphus had struggled for half a decade against the corrupt government of the Constellation, taking his cause across the twenty central Crown Jewel worlds and riding a groundswell of popular support – all of which had led him to this place. A last stand where the old regime was bound to collapse.

The battle over the planet Sonjeera would decide it all.

The General’s teeth ached from clenching his jaw, but he stood on the bridge of his flagship, ostensibly calm and confident. He had not intended to be a rebel leader, but the role had been forced on him, and he’d never lost sight of the goal. The ancient, incestuous system had oppressed many populations. The more powerful noble families devoured the weaker ones to steal their planetary holdings. Ultimately, even those powerful families split up and tore at one another, as if it were some kind of game. It had gone on far too long.

For five years now, the General’s ever-growing forces had battled old-guard loyalists, winning victories and suffering defeats. Any reasonable person could see that the bloated system was rotten, crumbling, unfair to the majority. People across the Crown Jewels had only needed a man to serve as an example, someone to light the spark and unify their grievances. Adolphus had fallen into this role by accident, but like a piece of driftwood caught in a whitewater flood, he had been swept along to his inevitable destination.

Now his forces converged over the main prize: Sonjeera, with its glorious white stone buildings, tall towers, and ancient museums – window-dressing that made the government appear to be as marvelous as the politicians claimed it was.

Diadem Michella Duchenet, the Constellation’s supreme ruler, would never admit defeat, clinging to her position of power with cadaverous claws. Rather than relinquish the Star Throne, the old woman would see the capital world laid to waste, without regard to the innocent citizens she claimed to represent and protect. And if the General allowed it to come to that, he would be no better than Diadem Michella. But he didn’t see any way around it.

In the battles of the rebellion so far, Adolphus had been careful to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but he knew the Diadem would eventually force his hand. She would draw a dark line of morality in front of him and dare him to cross it. Today might be that day . . .

“Steady ahead.” His flagship, the
Jacob
, was named after his father, one of the first casualties in the string of political and economic schemes that had provoked Adolphus into action. “Frigates and sweepers forward. Open the gunports and show them we mean business.”

“Aye, General.”

With an intense focus, he studied the screen and the planet growing larger by the minute; Sonjeera sparkled with tiny dots of ships, stations, and orbital activity. It was a sapphire laced with clouds, green continents, and city lights that sparkled across the night side. The crown jewel of all Crown Jewels.

Adolphus’s eyes were dark and old beyond his years, not having seen laughter in a long time. His black hair was neatly trimmed, and his square jaw had a tendency to show beard shadow, but he had shaved carefully only a few hours before. He intended to be presentable for this engagement, no matter how it turned out. He had his obligation to history . . .

His deep blue uniform was neat and impeccable, the coppery rank insignia prominent on his collar, though he sported no medals or decorations. The General had refused to let his men present him with accolades until they had actually won. He had not entered this conflict for glory or wealth, but justice.

“Tactical display, Mr Conyer. Let me see the distribution of our ships, and project the defenses that Sonjeera has mounted.”

“Here they are, General.” The tac officer called up a display of the 463 rebel ships – a fleet that was certainly superior to what the Army of the Constellation could muster here on short notice. Destroyers, fast harriers, frigates, sweepers, large carriers, even civilian cargo ships refitted with armor and weapons.

Above the capital planet, cargo ships and short-range in-system yachts and transports scattered, seeking shelter. A meager ring of security ships kept station near the main stringline hub, the orbiting nexus of interstellar lines that connected the Crown Jewel planets.
Not nearly enough
. The General’s forces could – and would – overwhelm the security ships and seize the hub without much resistance.

“The Diadem has mounted no primary defenses that we can see yet, sir.”

“She will,” Adolphus said. It couldn’t be that easy.

Over the codecall link, Franck Tello, the General’s second-in-command and a close friend, broke in from the bridge of his own destroyer, cheery as usual. “Maybe that’s the old bitch’s answer. One look at our fleet, and she ran to hide in a bomb shelter. I hope she took sanitary facilities and some extra panties.”

The men on the
Jacob
’s bridge chuckled, a release of tension, but Adolphus slowly shook his head. “She’s not stupid, Franck. Michella knew we were coming, and she’s been losing battles for years. If she was going to surrender, she would have cut a deal to save her own skin.” He didn’t like this.

As his fleet spread out and prepared to form a blockade, the surface-to-orbit traffic around Sonjeera increased dramatically. Passenger pods and shuttles rose into space, people evacuating the capital world in a disorderly rush.

“Maybe the bitch already fled,” Tello suggested.

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Adolphus said, “but I’d bet a month’s pay that she called for an immediate evacuation to cause chaos.”

An overloaded stringline hauler accelerated away from the orbiting hub, its framework crowded with passenger pods that dangled like ripe fruit. A second hauler remained docked at the hub, but it would not be loaded in time. The last-minute evacuees would be stranded there in orbit.

“It’s like a stampede. We’d better wrap this up before it turns into an even bigger mess. Four frigates, take the stringline hub,” Adolphus ordered. “Minimal damage, no casualties if possible.”

His first ships streaked in, broadcasting a surrender order. As they approached the hub, the second stringline hauler broke away from the dock and lurched away from the station, only half loaded. Three passenger pods disengaged and dropped free, improperly secured in the rush, and the ovoid vessels tumbled in free orbit.

“Stop that hauler! No telling who’s aboard,” Adolphus said into the codecall. He dispatched one of his large, slow carriers to block the vessel.

Passenger shuttles and evacuating in-system ships flurried about, retreating to the dark side of Sonjeera in panic. Adolphus clenched his jaw even harder; the Diadem had made them terrified of what he and his supposed barbarians would do . . . when it was Michella they should have feared.

The second stringline hauler continued to accelerate away from the hub, even as the General’s slow carrier moved to cross its path before the hauler could activate the ultrafast stringline engines.

The carrier pilot yelped over the codecall, “He’s going to ram us, General!”

“Retreat and match speed, but do not deviate from the path. If the hauler pilot insists on a crash, give him a gentle one.”

The rebel carrier refused to get out of the way even as the hauler moved forward. Adolphus admired the fortitude of the carrier’s crew; if the fleeing hauler activated the stringline engines, they would both be a vapor cloud. The hauler closed the distance and the rebel carrier blocked it, slowed it; the two ships collided in space, but the impact was minimal.

As the four rebel frigates again demanded the surrender of the string-line hub, the ten small Constellation security ships left their stations and swept forward in a coordinated move, opening fire on the General’s warships. Explosions rippled along the first frigate’s hull, drawing shouts of astonishment from the crews.

“What the hell are they doing?” Franck Tello cried over the codecall. “We’ve got hundreds more ships than they do!”

“Return fire,” Adolphus said. “Disable engines if possible . . . but do what you need to do.”

The frigate captains launched retaliatory fire, and three security ships exploded. Two others were damaged, but the rest circled around, undeterred. Streams of explosive projectiles flew in all directions, most of them directed at Adolphus’s frigates, but countless others missed their targets and hit nearby vessels, including the evacuating in-system ships that were scrambling away from the stringline hub.

When he saw two civilian transports explode, Adolphus yelled for his fleet to close in. “No time for finesse. Eradicate those security ships!”

In a hail of return fire, the rebels blew up the vessels before they could cause further damage. The General’s jaw ached. He hated useless death. “Why wouldn’t they stand down? They had no chance against us.”

Lieutenant Spencer, the weapons officer, cleared his throat. “Sir, if I might suggest, we can force the issue now. Threaten to blow up the whole hub if the Diadem doesn’t surrender. That would cripple the Constellation’s interstellar transport – the people would never stand for it.”