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He’d been thinking about the explosion at Rayna’s last rally, how he had lost the lower half of his body and yet emerged stronger than ever before with a sharper focus, and a greater determination—“Half a man, twice the leader.” Those who survived down there would be even more fiercely loyal than the population had been before.…

  And then the VenHold ship arrived over Walgis, a small vessel broadcasting a message of supposed hope and deceptive miracles. Manford felt his muscles tense as he reached down to hold onto Anari’s shoulders, drawing strength from her. She felt as solid as an old tree.

  “We have brought vaccines,” said the Suk doctor aboard the approaching vessel.

  His jaw ached as he gritted his teeth. Manford called all of his quarantine ships to high alert. Rather than turning their weapons toward the planet below to prevent escapees, now they focused their firepower outward, their crews ready to face this oncoming threat.

  Manford broadcast to the population below, not bothering to respond directly to the VenHold ship. “You are strong enough without medicine. Our beloved Rayna Butler endured the most horrific plagues spread by the thinking machines; diseases far worse than the red plague. Her heart and soul were strong, and she recovered. Rayna recovered because God wanted her to recover, knowing she had greater work to do. God will make you recover as well.”

  He cut off the communication and looked at Anari, who gazed up at him with complete acceptance and reverence. All around the bridge of his flagship, he saw similar expressions, giving him assurance that every vessel in the quarantine cordon would react the same.

  “We must protect them from the sinister influence,” Manford said. “We have to safeguard my people from the insidious promises of the demon Venport, and from their own weaknesses.”

  Steeling himself, he sent another transmission. “To all the afflicted people of Walgis, rejoice! You are saved.”

  Then he gave the order for all of his battleships around the planet to target the incoming medical ship. He felt no hesitation, merely relief when he issued his instruction. “Open fire.”

  And his crews obeyed.

  * * *

  Out on the Kolhar landing field, Josef Venport gazed at his numerous ships, a fleet of spacefolder transports and large cargo shuttles that would travel to orbit to dock with even larger carriers. These well-armed ships were an enhancement to his own defenses, in case Emperor Roderick ever got up the nerve to attack here.

  Fueling tankers filled the reservoirs of the large ships. With a whistling roar, one of the cargo shuttles heaved itself from the launching platform and thundered up into the sky. On the field, heavy machinery moved about, giving him a satisfied feeling. His VenHold fleet kept delivering much-needed—and now higher-priced—cargo to any planets in the Imperium that could afford the payments. It almost seemed like business as usual.

  Except the entire Imperium had turned on its head.

  “It defies reason! This is more insane than Manford has been before.” As he walked along, he clenched his fists and the black-garbed Draigo kept pace with gliding steps. “He destroyed our vessel, wiped out its cargo of vaccines, and left his own followers to rot from the pandemic. And they cheered him as he did it!”

  Draigo gave a small nod. “In my Mentat projections, sir, I recognized a very small possibility that the Butlerians might react this way. I apologize for not giving it sufficient credence.”

  “No one could have predicted such a heinous response, Draigo,” Venport said. “Even now that you’ve delivered your report, I still can’t believe it. Manford has doomed his people to die from a disease that is easily cured just because he doesn’t want the help to come from me. He’s a madman and a mass murderer.”

  Venport felt disgusted as well as angry. He didn’t really care about the dying barbarians on Walgis. As far as he was concerned, they could all suffer horribly from the red plague. And truth be told, he lost only one small ship, easily replaced, and a few Suk doctors who weren’t even his employees. As a business loss, Venport could easily overcome it. But it was so damned outrageous! He was having a very hard time believing the half-Manford’s immoral act.

  Draigo Roget shook his head. “It defies logic. If I am to make more accurate projections about our opponent, I shall have to learn to think more irrationally.”

  Venport stopped to watch a delivery vehicle bearing a sealed container of spice gas, pumping it into one of the ships to fill a Navigator’s sealed tank. He considered all the battles he had fought, his struggles to save humanity and rebuild civilization, to overcome the scars the thinking machines had left … as well as his struggles against the inept and foolhardy Emperor Salvador. For the good of all humankind, Venport had replaced Salvador with his brother Roderick, a man he believed to be more rational—although Roderick was now more interested in revenge than in strengthening his Imperium.

  “Sometimes I despair for humanity, and wonder why I continue this desperate and ruthless fight,” Venport said with a dismayed sigh. “Even after the defeat of the thinking machines and my constant struggles to help our race recover, the Butlerian fanatics remain. I fear they are our worst enemy. They will destroy our future as surely as any army of thinking machines ever could. The barbarians must be destroyed. No matter what weapons we must use or what sacrifices we must make, we have to crush Manford Torondo and his followers at all costs.”

  “I agree, Directeur,” said Draigo.

  Venport felt confident, though not arrogant. The Butlerian movement was composed of primitives, rabid barbarians, while VenHold had the most sophisticated technology in the Imperium. “They are no match for us,” he said.

  Beside him, Draigo did not respond, but his brow furrowed as he reviewed the facts. Venport strode ahead, assessing his ships and other resources.

  When the Mentat responded, he spoke so quietly that Venport almost didn’t hear his words. “And yet, I fear they will win.”

  About the Authors

  Brian Herbert, the author of numerous novels and short stories, has been critically acclaimed by leading reviewers in the United States and around the world. The eldest son of celebrated science fiction author Frank Herbert, he, with Kevin J. Anderson, is the author of Hellhole and continues his father’s beloved Dune series with books including The Winds of Dune, House Atreides, Sandworms of Dune, among other bestsellers. He also wrote a biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune. Herbert graduated from high school at age 16, and then attended U.C. Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in Sociology. Besides an author, Herbert has been an editor, business manager, board game inventor, creative consultant for television and collectible card games, insurance agent, award-winning encyclopedia salesman, waiter, busboy, maid and a printer. He and his wife once owned a double-decker London bus, which they converted into an unusual gift shop. Herbert and his wife, Jan, have three daughters. They live in Washington State. You can sign up for email updates here.

  More than two dozen of Kevin J. Anderson’s novels have appeared on national bestseller lists; and he has over eleven million books in print worldwide. His works have been translated into over 22 languages including German, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Hebrew. For a book signing during the promotional tour for his comedy/adventure novel AI! PEDRITO!, Anderson broke the Guinness World Record for "Largest Single-Author Signing," passing the previous records set by Gen. Colin Powell and Howard Stern. Kevin worked in California for twelve years as a technical writer and editor at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the nation’s largest research facilities. At the Livermore Lab, he met his wife Rebecca Moesta and also his frequent co-author, Doug Beason. After he had published ten of his own science fiction novels to wide critical acclaim, he came to the attention of Lucasfilm, and was offered the chance to write Star Wars novels. The novels in his Star Wars Jedi Academy trilogy became the three top-selling science fiction novels of 1994. He has also completed numerous other projects for Lucasfilm, including the 14 volumes in The New York Times bestselling Young Jedi Knights
series (co-written with his wife Rebecca Moesta). His three original Star Wars anthologies are the bestselling SF anthologies of all time.Kevin is also the author of three hardcover novels based on the X-Files; all three became international bestsellers, the first of which reached #1 on the London Sunday Times bestseller list. Ground Zero was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1995" by the readers of SFX magazine. Ruins hit The New York Times bestseller list, the first X-Files novel ever to do so, and was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1996."Kevin’s thriller Ignition, written with Doug Beason, has sold to Universal Studios as a major motion picture. Anderson and Beason’s novels have been nominated for the Nebula Award and the American Physics Society’s "Forum" award. Their other novels include Virtual Destruction, Fallout, and Ill Wind, which has been optioned by ABC TV for a television movie or miniseries. His collaborative works include ARTIFACT (Forge Books; May 2003), a thriller written with F. Paul Wilson, Janet Berliner, and Mathew Costello; and DUNE: THE BATTLE OF CORRIN (Tor Books; August 2004) written with Brian Herbert, Book 3 of their acclaimed Legends of Dune trilogy, and the sequel to the bestsellers DUNE: THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD and DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE. Kevin’s solo work has garnered wide critical acclaim; for example, Climbing Olympus was voted the best paperback SF novel of 1995 by Locus Magazine, Resurrection, Inc., was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, and his novel Blindfold was a 1996 preliminary Nebula nominee. Anderson has written numerous bestselling comics, including Star Wars and Predator titles for Dark Horse, and X-Files for Topps. Kevin’s research has taken him to the top of Mount Whitney and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, inside the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, into the Andes Mountains and the Amazon River, inside a Minuteman III missile silo and its underground control bunker, and onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Nimitz, inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. He’s also been on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange, inside a plutonium plant at Los Alamos, behind the scenes at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and out on an Atlas-E rocket launchpad. He also, occasionally, stays home and writes. Kevin and his wife, writer Rebecca Moesta, live in Colorado. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

  Art copyright © 2016 by Stephen Youll