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.
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First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010
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Copyright © Dream Star, Inc. and Word Fire, Inc., 2010
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Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84737-993-1
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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.
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Brian: to Julie, Kimberly, and Margaux
Kevin: to Jonathan, Jessica, and Harrison
May your lives be filled with a universe of opportunities
Acknowledgements
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.
Prologue
It 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 pan
ties.”
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.”
“But that’s not what I stand for, Lieutenant,” Adolphus said. “Hostages and terrorist acts are for cowards and bullies. The people of the Constellation need to see that I’m different.” The Diadem’s propaganda machine had already painted him with the broad strokes of “monster” and “anarchist.” If he were to sever the lines of transportation and trade among the Crown Jewels, the people would turn against him in a matter of weeks.
“General, the stringline hub is ours,” said the first frigate captain. “We have the high ground. Nobody on Sonjeera is going anywhere.”
Adolphus nodded, but did not let down his guard. “Harriers, round up those loose passenger pods before they burn up in orbit.”
“This is making me damned nervous, General,” Franck transmitted. “How can the Diadem just sit there, with almost five hundred rebel ships lining up in orbit?”
“Here it comes, sir!” broke in the weapons officer. “Constellation battleships emerging from Sonjeera’s sensor shadow.”
Now Adolphus understood. “The security ships were trying to stall us. All right, how many are we facing?”
Conyer ran a scan. As they stormed forward, the Diadem’s ships moved in a random flurry as if to disguise their numbers. “Three hundred and twelve, sir. And that’s an accurate count. Probably all the ships she’s got left.”
Though his rebels outgunned them by a substantial margin, he was sure Diadem Michella had given her fleet strict no-surrender orders. If the General’s fleet gained the upper hand, the Constellation defenders might initiate a suicide protocol . . . though he wondered if they would follow such an order. General Tiber Adolphus engendered such loyalty among his own men, but he doubted the Diadem was capable of inspiring such dedication. However, the security ships around the stringline hub had already demonstrated their willingness to die.
“They’re not slowing, General!” Lieutenant Spencer said in a crisp voice.
“Message coming in from the Constellation flagship, sir,” said the communications officer.
The screen filled with the image of an older gentleman wearing a Constellation uniform studded with so many ribbons, medals, and pins that it looked like gaudy armor over the uniform shirt. The man had sad gray eyes, a lean face, and neatly groomed muttonchop sideburns. Adolphus had faced this opponent in eight previous battles, winning five of them, but only by narrow margins. “Commodore Hallholme!” Even as the Diadem’s last-stand defense fleet came toward them, the General forced himself to be calm and businesslike, especially with this man. “You are clearly outgunned. My people have strongholds on numerous Crown Jewel planets, and today I intend to take Sonjeera. Only the details remain.”
“But history rests on the details.” The old Commodore seemed dyspeptic from the choice he faced. Percival Hallholme had been a worthy foe and an honorable man, well-trained in the rules of engagement. “The Diadem has commanded me to insist upon your surrender.”
The Jacob’s bridge crew chuckled at the absurd comment, but Adolphus silenced them. “That won’t be possible at this time, Commodore.” This was the last chance he would give, and he put all of his sincerity into the offer. “Please be reasonable – you know how this is going to end. If you help me secure a peaceful resolution without any further bloodshed and no damage to Sonjeera – a planet beloved by all of us – I would be willing to work out amnesty arrangements for yourself and your top-tier officers, even a suitably supervised exile for Diadem Michella, Lord Selik Riomini, and some of the worst offenders among the nobility.”
While the Constellation ships surged closer, Adolphus continued to stare at Hallholme’s image, silently begging the man to see reason, to flinch, to back down in the face of harsh reality.
For a fleeting instan
t, Adolphus thought the old Commodore would reconsider, then Hallholme said, “Unfortunately, General, the Diadem gave me no latitude for negotiation. I am required to force your surrender at all costs, using any means necessary.” He gestured to his communications officer. “Before you open fire, you should see something.”
Multiple images flooded the panel screens on the Jacob’s bridge of forlorn-looking people, gaunt-faced, sunken-eyed, and plainly terrified. They were packed in metal-walled rooms that looked like spacecraft brig chambers or sealed crew quarters.
Adolphus recognized some of the faces.
Over the codecall channel, Franck Tello shouted, “That’s my sister! She’s been missing for months.”
Some of Adolphus’s bridge officers identified other captives, but there were thousands. The images flickered one after another.
“We’re holding them aboard these ships, General,” Hallholme said. He had blood on his scalp and forehead now, which he wiped with a cloth. Something had happened when the cameras went to the hostages. “Seventeen-thousand hostages. Members of your own families and their close associates. If you open fire upon us, you will be killing your own.”
Adolphus’s stomach churned with revulsion as he looked at the terrified hostages, including women, children, and the elderly. “I always thought you were a man of honor, Commodore. This loathsome act is beneath you.”
“Not when the Constellation is at stake.” Hallholme looked embarrassed, even disgusted with himself, but he shook it off, still holding a loth to his head. “Look at them. Have all of your rebels look at them. Once again, General, I demand your surrender.”
“We’ve all faced tragedies, sir,” said Conyer, with an audible swallow. “We should have known the Diadem would stoop to such barbaric tactics.”
“We’ve got to take Sonjeera, General!” said the navigation officer.
On his own ship, the old Commodore barked an order, and on the transmitted images, the Diadem’s guards strode into the field of view, brandishing shock prods with sizzling electric tips. The hostages tried to fight back as the guards fell upon them with the shock prods, burning skin, shedding blood. As the hostages screamed in pain, Adolphus felt the torture as if it were inflicted upon his own body.
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