PRAISE FOR
Perdition
“Aguirre revisits the classic idea of survival within an anarchic, violent society, offering protagonists whose moral gray contrasts with the stygian dark of those around them. Sirantha Jax fans may be intrigued to see what befell Jael after his ill-considered actions there, and new lead Dred is a strong linchpin for a promising new series.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Let me just say I didn’t think Ann Aguirre could top the [Sirantha Jax] series, but she definitely did with Perdition . . . The themes of the book were thought-provoking and gripping because it really explores the nature of what it is to be human in a place like Perdition, but also the nature of good and evil . . . I also think the atmosphere reminded me of a crossover with an adult-rated version of Pirates of the Caribbean and Prison Break. I loved this mishmash of elements, and it really helped to create a vibrant but dark world. But overall, the fast, hectic pace, the intrigue, and the great characterization made this a breathless and amazing read. I was very sad that I had to turn the last page. Dred and her cohorts [have] firmly captured my heart! I give Perdition an A+.”
—The Book Pushers
“When [Perdition] finally found its way into my greedy little hands, I was basically in ecstasy. And I remained in an absolute state of bliss throughout . . . Perdition will give you no time to breathe, but it will make you appreciate your freedom . . . It will also make you care for its characters despite their awful and violent histories. My recommendation? Get out of that chair and go grab a copy now!”
—The Nocturnal Library
PRAISE FOR THE SIRANTHA JAX NOVELS
Endgame
“Infusing love and war together to make a pulse-pounding, heartbreaking read, the Sirantha Jax series . . . will remain on my keeper shelf for some time.”
—Under the Covers Book Blog
Aftermath
“Highly satisfying . . . Aftermath has all of the heart, soul, adventure, and sense of wonder that you could ask for in a character-driven series like this.”
—SF Site
“Aguirre’s writing is tight, and the characters have plenty of depth . . . [She] is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and Aftermath is a big reason why.”
—ScienceFiction.com
Killbox
“Fraught with action, farewells, and sorrow, fans of this series won’t be able to put Killbox down . . . Ms. Aguirre has left the reader hanging with a finish that guarantees the reader will be on pins and needles waiting for the next installment.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Oh wow! I literally inhaled this book, and I could not put it down . . . An epic space opera . . . Five out of five stars!”
—The Book Pushers
Doubleblind
“One of my favorite aspects of this series is Jax. I love her as a heroine, and this book really allows Jax to shine.”
—Smexy Books
“Ann Aguirre tells a good story, plain and simple . . . Doubleblind was a fantastic installment in the series, and, while being immensely satisfying, it still left me wanting more in the best possible way.”
—Tempting Persephone
Wanderlust
“Fast-paced and thrilling, Wanderlust is pure adrenaline. Sirantha Jax is an unforgettable character, and I can’t wait to find out what happens to her next. The world Ann Aguirre has created is a roller-coaster ride to remember.”
—Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“The details of communication, travel, politics, and power in a greedy, lively universe have been devised to the last degree but are presented effortlessly. Aguirre has the mastery and vision which come from critical expertise: She is unmistakably a true science fiction fan, writing in the genre she loves.”
—The Independent (London)
“A thoroughly enjoyable blend of science fiction, romance, and action, with a little something for everyone, and a great deal of fun. It’s down and dirty, unafraid to show some attitude.”
—SF Site
Grimspace
“A terrific first novel full of page-turning action, delightful characters, and a wry twist of humor.”
—Mike Shepherd, national bestselling author
“An irresistible blend of action and attitude. Sirantha Jax doesn’t just leap off the page—she storms out, kicking, cursing, and mouthing off. No wonder her pilot falls in love with her; readers will, too.”
—Sharon Shinn, national bestselling author
“A tightly written, edge-of-your-seat read.”
—Linnea Sinclair, RITA Award–winning author
Also by Ann Aguirre
Sirantha Jax Series
GRIMSPACE
DOUBLEBLIND
KILLBOX
AFTERMATH
ENDGAME
The Dred Chronicles
PERDITION
HAVOC
Corine Solomon Series
BLUE DIABLO
HELL FIRE
SHADY LADY
DEVIL’S PUNCH
AGAVE KISS
Cowritten as A. A. Aguirre
BRONZE GODS
SILVER MIRRORS
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
HAVOC
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2014 by Ann Aguirre.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13971-8
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / September 2014
Cover art by Scott M. Fischer.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise for Titles by Ann Aguirre
Books by Ann Aguirre
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Party Crashers
Chapter 2: Building the Walls
Chapter 3: Blood for Blood
Chapter 4: Echoes in Darkness
Chapter 5: Enemies at the Gate
Chapter 6: Best-Laid Plans
Chapter 7: Adapt or Die
Chapter 8: Willing Sacrifice
Chapter 9: Tough Love
Chapter 10: The Sword Th
ey Die On
Chapter 11: Havoc Unleashed
Chapter 12: The Wounded Queen
Chapter 13: Immigration
Chapter 14: Burying the Dead
Chapter 15: Baiting the Trap
Chapter 16: Fish in a Barrel
Chapter 17: Falling Hard
Chapter 18: Desperate Measures
Chapter 19: One Good Man
Chapter 20: Death and Remembrance
Chapter 21: Sex-Pain Pleasure Games
Chapter 22: The Past Is Another Country
Chapter 23: Let the Games Begin
Chapter 24: Something from Before
Chapter 25: Truth or Dare
Chapter 26: Something Deep and Strange
Chapter 27: No Greater Love
Chapter 28: Dark and Darker
Chapter 29: Whispers in the Dark
Chapter 30: Hide and Seek
Chapter 31: The Storydance
Chapter 32: Coming in Hot
Chapter 33: Red as Blood
Chapter 34: A Shadow Falls
Chapter 35: Karma Is a Stroppy Bitch
Chapter 36: Rats in the Walls
Chapter 37: A Cold and Creeping Doom
Chapter 38: Chaotic Crush
Chapter 39: Honor Among Thieves
Chapter 40: Last Resort
Chapter 41: Unexpected Favors
Chapter 42: Death of a Cannibal
Chapter 43: Not So Quiet Riot
Chapter 44: Garden of Evil
Chapter 45: Sympathy for the Devil
For Courtney Milan, who makes me feel smarter and more talented than I am, just because she reads my books.
Acknowledgments
As usual, I’m starting with Laura Bradford, my agent, partner, and friend.
Next I offer a hat tip to Anne Sowards for following me into dark places and never doubting that I’ll write us out again. Thank you for making my books better. In addition, kudos to the team at Penguin for producing such beautiful books. Thanks also to my copy editors, Bob and Sara Schwager, who do such a fantastic job polishing my prose.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed with tremendous colleagues and amazing friendships. There’s no space to articulate how much these individuals have contributed, so I’ll name them in lieu of eloquence: Lauren Dane, Tessa Dare, Bree Bridges, Donna J. Herren, Vivian Arend, Megan Hart, Kate Elliott, Myke Cole, Leigh Bardugo, Courtney Milan, Robin LaFevers, Rae Carson, Lish McBride, and Yasmine Galenorn. You’ve all taught me something or led by example, possibly talked me down from a bad place or inspired me to keep going. So thank you all for being brilliant.
Thanks to my family for putting up with me. I’m trying to spend more time with you, and I hope that’s a good thing. I appreciate how you listen to my ideas and give me new ones.
To my beta readers, Karen Alderman and Majda Colak, there are no words to express my affection and gratitude. Through many projects, your excitement and enthusiasm fuel mine. I hope you know how much your support means to me, but the number of books I write—with you both cheering me on—should tell you everything.
Thanks also to my wondrous proofreader Fedora Chen. She always makes me look good, no matter how challenging the task.
Finally, all my love to you, readers, who make it possible for me to live my dream. Thank you so much for the letters and cards. I cherish them all.
1
Party Crashers
Laser fire spattered the rusty floor like neon rain.
“What the hell—” Dred bit out, but there was no time for questions.
In ten seconds, she was fighting for her life. Along with Jael, Tameron, and Martine, she had come to wait for the supply ship. They’d been alerted as usual by the flicker of power just before lights out, so they’d hauled ass to the neutral zone in Shantytown to wait for provisions. Instead of bots unloading crates and barrels, a full squadron of armed men stormed out. She dove for cover, shouting at her people to stay low.
Why didn’t I bring the Peacemaker? But she hadn’t expected things to blow up like this. Some surprises couldn’t be foreseen.
The smell of scorched metal filled the air as Shantytown prisoners ran amok amid the blasts. Most weren’t sane to begin with, and it had been over two months since any provisions arrived. If the population hadn’t been thinned so dramatically through the war with Priest and Grigor, Queensland would have already been on the verge of starvation, even with the hydroponics garden and the tetchy Kitchen-mate. Dred could only imagine how bad things were here, with no rules or safety, just the law of tooth and claw.
Bodies dropped all around, and Dred crawled toward the corridor behind her. A few Shanty-men made it past the nose of the ship and attacked the helmeted squadron with ragged yellow nails and rusted bits of wall panel. Against full armor, they did no damage, and the soldiers picked them off with close-range shots. Their dying screams echoed in her head even as the assault gave her the necessary time to regroup.
“Fall back!” she shouted.
Martine snarled, but she could doubtless see how poor the odds were and how the Shanty-men were dying in droves. Along with Tam, she slid around the corner just behind Dred, while Jael covered their retreat. He swore as a shot sizzled against his back, but it didn’t stop him. With a snap glance over one shoulder, she checked on him; anyone else would be on the ground in shock. His jaw clenched, but he ran through the pain, dodging lightning bolts bouncing off the walls behind them.
An inhuman-sounding voice crackled through the speakers on the helmet. “Let them go. We have plenty to clean up here first. We’ll get them eventually.”
That’s what I’m worried about.
Dred sprinted until they reached Queensland; she didn’t explain the rush to the sentries. Once she composed herself and discussed the situation with her advisors, she’d send Martine to update the rest of the men. Until then, they could wonder why there were no supplies. She beckoned Tam, Martine, and Jael to her quarters, where they were assured of privacy. She waited until the door closed behind them, then she secured the lock.
I learned something from the clusterfuck with Wills.
As the relatively new ruler of Queensland—it had been less than a turn since she killed Artan and took his turf—Dred had trusted Wills, a madman with a gift for prognostication, without realizing he owed his primary allegiance to Silence. Their alliance was over now, and she knew she hadn’t finished her business with Death’s Handmaiden. For the time being, revenge had to wait. Once retribution had been her primary purpose, and it was the reason she’d ended up in Perdition. Time had taught Dred to be more judicious with her drive to violence.
“Report. Start with Tam.” He was a slight man with brown skin and a cunning mind. From what little she knew of him, he had a knack for politics, skilled at seeing hidden snares and schemes, as well as planning his own. Since the disaster with Wills, she didn’t trust him fully, but that applied to pretty much everyone in her inner circle. She didn’t need to explain that she wanted to hear his observations.
The spymaster answered, “At least fifty got out of that transport. There was no room for anything else in the cargo area.”
Martine added, “They all had multiple weapons, and their armor was top-notch. I doubt there’s a weapon on board that could scratch it.”
She was a small, dark-skinned woman with teeth filed to points to demonstrate how dangerous it was to mess with her. Though Dred hadn’t always gotten along with her, in the past few months the other woman had proven her loyalty, at least as much as anyone did in a place like this. Martine was tough, smart, and honest. Like most, she’d hated Artan, and she took it personally when a raid took her men from her. At first she’d thought Dred was a coward for not pushing back immediately. Now she seemed to understand the need to evaluate resources and plan strikes accordingly.
I’m not claiming territory I can’t defend.
“Apart from the turrets and the Peacemaker,” Jael put in. “The uniforms had no logo, no emblems, no identifying details of any kind. That means this is black ops.”
Jael was a former merc who was sent to Perdition because he was too dangerous to be allowed his freedom and too valuable to kill, mostly because he wasn’t human. He was Bred, the result of an off-the-books experiment. She didn’t know how many tank-borns had survived, but Jael acted like he was alone in the universe. Maybe he used to be. Not anymore.
Possibly she didn’t mind his difference because she had her own burden to carry. The first time she left the colony where she was born, her head nearly exploded with unwanted stimuli, a mad wash of deviant longings and murderous impulses she couldn’t rightly call a gift. Things only got worse from there, and her story ended in blood, wound round with chains. There’s a reason he and I are here. Dred controlled her empathy now, but the weight of it hadn’t lessened over the turns.
Of all of her people, she relied on Jael most, probably because they felt the same, though she was far from comfortable with the development, and Dred was ready for him to turn on her, as people usually did, but it would hurt if she had to put him down; she didn’t usually let people get that close.
Tam continued, “They also moved as a unit and were clearly taking orders from the one who called them back.”
“Mercs,” Martine guessed. “Highly paid if equipment is a gauge of earning power.”
“Then what the frag are they doing here?” Dred demanded.
Jael wore a somber look. “Cleaning up.”
Tam nodded. “That’s my assessment as well. They’ve been sent to purge the facility.”
She huffed out a breath, trying not to show how rocked she was by that conclusion. Things had been the same inside Perdition for turns now. Dred had no idea what political machinations had resulted in this new crisis, but they had to handle it. The worst part was, even if Queensland wiped out the first extermination crew, the Conglomerate had the budget to send more—more men with heavier weapons and deadlier tech. There was no telling what protocols were in place, however, or how long it would take before funds were skimmed and allotted to this kind of black op. It gave her limited ability to predict how much time they had between strike teams.