The Snake Pit

The Empire may have fallen, but the battle to save civilisation rages on. Confucius was a minor world of no importance to anyone, save for its inhabitants, until raw minerals were discovered beneath her soil and new hyper-routes were opened up. Her independence ended shortly afterwards, her neighbours invading – with the help of interstellar corporations – and occupying her soil, forcing her people to fight a desperate insurgency that tore the planet's society apart and left ruin in its wake. The occupation was brought to an end shortly before Earthfall, but Confucius's problems have only just begun. The provisional planetary government is flimsy at best, overshadowed and dominated by warlords who have no intention of surrendering their power to the people. The Imperial Authorities, cut off from the Empire, have little real influence, playing their political games while the planet burns; the final occupation garrisons, their troops supposedly confined to barracks, cast a baleful shadow over the land. And, to the north, a communist insurgency is gaining power, feeding on the human misery and inequalities unleashed by the war and preparing to march south to bring the whole world under their banner. It is only a matter of time until civil war breaks out. In many places, the fighting is already underway. In a desperate bid to buy time, the Terran Marine Corps has sent Prince Roland and his men to help secure and stabilise the planet, to preserve as much as possible for the post-Imperial order. But they have landed in a snake pit and, as powerful forces align against them, Roland is forced to risk everything on a final desperate gamble, a gamble that may save the world or condemn millions of innocent people to the fires of civil war …