Free Hellhole by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson

many accepted, choosing to forsake the rotten core of the Constellation.
    Better to rule on Hellhole than to serve on Sonjeera .
    While delivering the exiles, the Constellation stringline captain had smuggled Adolphus a storage crystal containing a complete database of Hallholme survey records, which helped the General and his experts make plans for their colony. That had made a great deal of difference.
    After the stringline hauler departed, leaving them on the bleak planet, with no further contact expected for at least a month, Adolphus addressed those who had accompanied him into exile. “Once again, we must fight an adversary named Hallholme to survive – the planet this time, not the Commodore.”
    Such a bold undertaking would never have succeeded with a random group of people, but these fighters had served with him, sworn their lives to him. The General ran the fledgling colony like a military operation. He inventoried his personnel and their skills, mapped out the path to survival, kept a careful database of foodstuffs, seed stock, machinery.
    Immediately laying out the grid for the main town, Adolphus dispatched scouts to explore resources – aquifers, metal deposits, native vegetation that could be processed into something useful, minerals and building stone. His teams set up greenhouse domes, foundries, bare-bones manufacturing centers, power plants. Drilling crews got the water pumping and purified; military engineers erected shelters designed to endure the harsh climate (what little was known of it). The banished workers built generators, activated energy cells, planted and harvested crops.
    They survived the first year by the narrowest of margins.
    Only Adolphus knew how close it was. Long before the prepackaged supplies ran out, he reviewed the accounting, did a physical inventory, met with his supply sergeants, calculated what they would need . . . and the numbers didn’t add up. The Diadem had intentionally reduced the promised shipments and given them too little to live on.
    However, General Adolphus still had friends working behind the scenes back in the Crown Jewels. Undocumented supplies arrived in the downboxes on the next stringline delivery, additional protein to supplement the harvest from the domed greenhouses. For seven months, the colonists continued to find surreptitious stashes that appeared on no manifest.
    And then the extra packages had stopped, abruptly. Adolphus suspected something bad had happened to the nameless sympathizers, but he doubted he would ever know. Regardless, those smuggled supplies had been enough to get them over the hump. Michella must have been extremely frustrated . . .
    Adolphus let Ishop Heer continue his work for hours. At first, the General remained in the room, making for an intentionally uncomfortable environment. The Diadem’s aide always knew the General was breathing down his neck, watching him . . . but Ishop didn’t seem to mind. He concentrated on the records with the intensity of a patient yet hungry predator.
    Eventually, Adolphus went off to dinner, offering none to the other man. The act was petty, but by making his anger and annoyance plain, Adolphus showed Ishop what he expected to see (and the anger was indeed real).
    Even while the General dined, Ishop did not leave his work. Hidden imagers monitored the inspector the whole time. The static-storm continued to rage at its full intensity, but Elba was shielded and safe.
    When Adolphus returned to the study, Ishop had his notes stacked neatly, his screen turned to face the door. He already had the Hellhole records that were presented to the regular tribute auditors – files that the General doctored in order to minimize the apparent resources of Hellhole, thus reducing what he was required to pay to the Constellation. Adolphus also kept another set of files that he referred to as “the real records.”
    Ishop wore a look of triumph. “Your fascination with Napoleon is your undoing,