Hunters Of Dune

by Frank Herbert

  Just shy of dawn, Murbella and thousands of her black-uniformed Sisters filtered into Ysai to engage the defenders from the inside out, attacking where they were least expected. Although the entrenched whores had anticipated a large-scale lightning assault with attack 'thopters and heavy weaponry from above, the Sisterhood's commandos fought like scorpions from the shadows, striking, stinging, killing. The hand-to-hand combat made famous by the ancient Swordmasters of Ginaz required no technology more sophisticated than a sharp blade.

  The Mother Commander chose her own target after reviewing the personal habits of Honored Matre Niyela. Accompanied by a small guard of fighters, Murbella ran directly to Niyela's ostentatious apartment near the central Guild Bank buildings in Ysai. The Valkyries in their combat singlesuits seemed to be cloaked in black oil. Half of the assassination operations were over before the whores managed to sound the first alarms.

  Brightly clothed Honored Matres guarded the entrance to Niyela's dwelling, but Murbella and her companions struck in force, firing silent projectiles that hit their marks. Murbella bounded up an interior stairway, followed by Janess and her most trusted fighters. On the second level, a tall, athletic woman emerged from shadows in the hall. Dressed in a purple leotard and a cape adorned with chains and sharp crystal shards, she moved with the grace of a predatory feline.

  Murbella recognized Niyela from Priestess Iriel's vivid memories. "Strange, you don't look at all like Baron Harkonnen," she said. "Perhaps some of his most prominent features did not breed true. Maybe that's a good thing."

  As if springing an ambush, fully fifty Honored Matres emerged from doorways to take up protective positions around Niyela, arrogantly assuming the smaller assault squad would buckle and retreat upon seeing them. Like a deadly dance, the well-trained Valkyries paired off against them, flashing blades in their hands and sharp spines in their combat suits.

  Murbella had eyes only for Niyela. The two leaders faced off, circling. The other women seemed to expect a "softened" Mother Commander to cringe at the prospect of combat.

  The Honored Matre leader suddenly kicked out with a callused and deadly foot, but Murbella moved faster and eluded the blow. In a blur of motion, she counterattacked from one side with her fists and elbows, backing her adversary away. Then Murbella laughed, which unnerved her opponent.

  In an unrestrained response, the Honored Matre threw herself at Murbella, fingers outstretched like knives, but Murbella thrust up with her left elbow, catching Niyela with the armored spine protruding from her combat suit. The slice shed blood down Niyela's arm. Murbella landed a solid kick in the other woman's solar plexus, driving her back into the wall.

  Bumping into the stone barrier, Niyela slumped, as if beaten. She sprang to one side and darted back, but Murbella was ready for her, countering every move, driving Niyela backward until she had nowhere left to go. Even her Honored Matre followers could not resist the dizzyingly swift fighting techniques that the Mother Commander had drilled into her soldiers. All fifty of the guards were dead, leaving their leader alone and defeated.

  "Kill me." Niyela spat the words.

  "I'll do worse." Murbella smiled. "I will take you to Chapterhouse as my prisoner."

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, the victorious Mother Commander marched through the streets of Ysai and mingled with curious crowds. The Cult of Sheeana had taken firm root here, and the Gammu natives saw their liberation as a miracle, interpreting the army of Sisters as soldiers fighting for their beloved martyr.

  Noting various clear behavioral markers, Murbella suspected that some women in the crowd were actually Honored Matres who had changed their distinctive clothes. Were they cowards, or the seeds of a fifth column who would continue to resist on Gammu? Even with the signs of victory around her, Murbella knew that the fighting and consolidation would continue for some time, if not in Ysai itself then in the outlying cities. She would have to assign teams to root out any remaining nests of rebels.

  She was not the only one to notice the lurking Honored Matres. Her agents surged forward, making arrests, thinning the crowd. Anyone captured would be given the opportunity to convert. Niyela herself would begin enforced training back on Chapterhouse. Those who didn't cooperate would be put to death.

  Murbella's triumphant forces took more than eight thousand Honored Matres back to Chapterhouse, and more would follow after the mop-up operations were completed under the direction of Janess. The conversion process would be difficult, monitored closely by troops of Truthsayers and now-loyal Honored Matres--but no more difficult than the original forced unification. The Mother Commander could not afford to discard so many potential fighters, despite the risk.

  Thus the New Sisterhood grew even stronger, with more and more numbers added to their forces.

  SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER

  ESCAPE FROM CHAPTERHOUSE

  Is Love born to us, as natural a part of our humanity as breathing and sleeping? Or is Love something we must create within ourselves?

  --MOTHER SUPERIOR DARWI ODRADE,

  private Bene Gesserit records (censored)

  T

  wo more years passed aboard the no-ship. Paul Atreides, his body now ten years old, his mind stuffed full of all the external memories the library archives could provide and the histories of what he was supposed to be, walked with the girl Chani.

  She was rail-thin and petite, two years his junior. Though she had grown up far from the arid wastelands of Arrakis, her body's metabolism, genetically adapted from her Fremen heritage, still did not squander water. Chani wore her dark red hair pulled back in a braid. Her brown skin was smooth and her mouth quick to flash a smile, especially when she was with Paul.

  Her eyes were a natural sepia, not the blue-within-blue eyes of spice addiction, which Paul had seen in every historical image of an older Chani, the beloved concubine of Muad'Dib and mother of his twin children.

  As they descended from one deck to another, making their way to the aft engine section of the great no-ship, Paul let his hand slip into hers. Though they were still just children, it seemed a comfortable thing to do, and she did not pull away. All their lives they had played together, explored together, and never questioned that they were supposed to be partners, just like in the old stories.

  "Why do you find the engines so fascinating, Usul?" she said, calling him by the Fremen name that she had learned from her own diaries and journal recordings in the ship's archives.

  In ancient, preserved poetry, the first Paul Muad'Dib had described Chani's voice as "the perfectly beautiful tones of fresh water chuckling over rocks." Listening to her now, the new Paul could see how he had once come to that conclusion.

  "The Holtzman engines are so strange and powerful, able to take us anywhere we can imagine going." He reached out to tap her small, pointed chin with his fingertip, then said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Or maybe the real reason is because nobody watches us in the engine rooms."

  Chani's brow furrowed. "On a ship this size, there are plenty of places for us to be alone."

  Paul shrugged, smiling. "I didn't say it was a very good reason. I just wanted to go there."

  They entered the giant engineering bay, where in normal times only certified Guildsmen could go. Under the present circumstances, Duncan Idaho, Miles Teg, and some Reverend Mothers knew enough about these foldspace engines to keep them functioning. Fortunately, no-ships were so exquisitely and sturdily built that little went seriously wrong, even after so many years without standard upkeep. The Ithaca's major operating systems and self-repair mechanisms were sufficient to perform regular maintenance. The more important the component, the more redundancy was designed into it.

  Nevertheless, both Teg and Duncan, using their Mentat abilities, had set about studying and memorizing all known specifications of the immense vessel to prepare themselves for any crisis that might occur. Paul supposed Thufir Hawat would also contribute his wisdom, once he grew up and became a Mentat again.

  Now the boy and girl stood surround
ed by throbbing machinery. Although the no-field projectors were located in different parts of the ship, with repeaters and reinforcing stations mounted throughout the hull, these giant engines were similar to the foldspace designs that had been used back in the time of Muad'Dib, and much earlier in the Butlerian Jihad. Tio Holtzman's then-dangerous foldspace engines had been the key to ultimate victory over the thinking machines.

  Paul stared up at the massive machines, trying to sense their driving mathematical force, though he didn't understand it all. Chani, a few inches shorter than he, surprised him by standing on her tiptoes and kissing his cheek. He spun to face her, laughing.

  She saw the surprise on his face. "Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? I've read all the files. We're destined for each other, aren't we?"

  Growing serious, Paul held her small shoulders and gazed into her eyes. Then he reached out to stroke her left eyebrow, and drew his fingers down her cheek. He felt awkward doing this. "It's strange, Chani. But I can sense a tingle . . ."

  "Or a tickle! I feel it, too. A memory just beneath the surface."

  He kissed her on the brow, experimenting with the sensation. "Proctor Superior Garimi made us read our history in the archives, but those are just words. We don't know it here." He tapped his chest over the heart. "We can't know exactly how we fell in love before. We must have said a lot of private things to each other."

  Her lips formed a frown, not quite a little girl's pout but rather an expression of concern. Her accelerated education and maturity made her seem much older than her years. "Nobody knows how to fall in love, Usul. Remember the story? Paul Atreides and his mother were in terrible danger when they joined the Fremen. Everyone you knew was dead. You were so desperate." She drew a quick breath. "Maybe that's the only reason we fell in love."

  He stood close to her, embarrassed, not knowing what he was supposed to do. "How can I believe that, Chani? A love like ours was the stuff of legend. That doesn't happen by accident. I'm just saying that if we are to fall in love again when we get older, then we'll have to do it ourselves."

  "Do you think we're getting a second chance?"

  "All of us are."

  She hung her head. "Of the things I've read, the saddest was the story of our first baby, our original son Leto."

  Paul was surprised at the lump that automatically formed in his throat. He had read his old journals about their baby boy. He'd been so proud of their little son, but because of his damnable prescience, he had known that the first little Leto would be killed in a Harkonnen raid. That poor boy had never had a chance, hadn't even lived long enough to be christened Leto II, after Paul's father.

  According to the records, his second son--the infamous one--had been willing to go down the dark and forbidding path where Paul himself had refused to go. Had Leto II made the right choice? The God Emperor of Dune had certainly changed the human race, and the course of history, for all time.

  "I'm sorry, I made you sad, Usul."

  He took a step away from her. Around them the engine room seemed to vibrate with anticipation. "Everyone hates our Leto II because of what he turned into. He did very bad things, according to history." The first Chani had died in childbirth, barely living long enough to see the twins.

  "Maybe he'll get a second chance, too," she said. The ghola of the little boy was now four years old and already showing unusual acuity and talent.

  Paul took her hand and impulsively kissed her on the cheek. Then they both left the engine room. "This time, our son could do things right."

  The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.

  --BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN,

  the original

  I

  n a state of high agitation, the twelve-year-old boy gazed out on a pristine meadow of colorful flowers. A waterfall cascaded over a rocky precipice and splashed into an icy blue pool. Too much of this so-called "beauty" was painful and unsettling. The air carried no industrial chemicals; he hated even to breathe the stuff into his lungs.

  To break the boredom and work off some of his energy, he had gone for a long walk, kilometers from the compound where he had been sentenced to live on the planet Dan. Caladan, he reminded himself. The curtailed name offended him. He had read his history and seen images of himself as the old, fat Baron.

  Exiled here for three years now, the young Vladimir Harkonnen found he missed the laboratories of Tleilax, Matre Superior Hellica, and even the smell of slig excrement. Trapped here, tutored and trained and prepared by the humorless Face Dancers, the boy was impatient to make his mark. He was, after all, important to the plan (whatever it was).

  Shortly after he'd been sent away to Caladan for the trivial crime of sabotaging the axlotl tank holding the ghola of Paul Atreides, the new baby had been born in Bandalong--healthy, despite Vladimir's best efforts. Khrone had whisked the infant Atreides away from Uxtal and brought him to Caladan for training and observation. Apparently, the Face Dancers had something vital for the Atreides to accomplish, and they needed a Harkonnen to help them achieve it.

  The child, named Paolo to distinguish him from his historical counterpart, was three years old now. The Face Dancers took great care to keep him in a separate facility, "safe" from Vladimir, who couldn't wait until the two of them could . . . play together.

  In times gone by, Caladan had been a world of simple fishermen, vintners, and farmers. With its immense ocean, Caladan had too much water and too little land to support large commercial industries. These days, most of the villages were gone, and the local population had dwindled to a small percentage of what it had once been. The Scattering had broken many threads that bound a multigalactic civilization together, and since Caladan produced little of commercial value, no one wanted to bring the planet back into the overall tapestry.

  Vladimir had done a considerable amount of research in the reconstructed castle. According to the written history, House Atreides had ruled this place "with a firm yet benevolent hand," but the boy knew better than to believe that propaganda. History had a way of sanitizing the truth, and time distorted even the most dramatic events. The local files had obviously been padded with laudatory comments about Duke Leto.

  Since the Atreides and Harkonnens were mortal enemies, he knew that his own house must have been the truly heroic of the two. When young Vladimir got his memories back, he would be able to recall such things firsthand. He wanted to reexperience the events with visceral truth. He wanted to know the treachery of the Atreides and the valor of the Harkonnens. He wanted to feel the adrenaline rush of real victory and taste the blood of fallen enemies on his fingers. He wanted the memories restored now! It galled him that he had to wait so long before having his past life triggered.

  Alone in the meadow, he played with an inferno gun he had found at the castle compound. This lush natural environment of the seashore headlands disgusted him. He wanted machines to plow it under and pave it over. Make way for real civilization! The only plants he wanted to see were factory buildings sprouting up. He hated clean water spilling all over the place, wanted to see manufactory chemicals darken it and give it a sulfurous odor.

  With a fiendish grin, Vladimir activated the gun and saw its muzzle glow orange in his hands. He touched the yellow button for the first-stage burner and watched a fine mist of concentrated incendiary particles spread over the meadow, the seeds of destruction. Moving to a safer area of rock, he tapped the red second-stage button, and an immense blowtorch vomited from the weapon's barrel. The flammable particles caught fire, transforming the entire meadow into a conflagration.

  Beautiful!

  Filled with malignant glee, he scurried to a higher vantage point and watched the flames burn and crackle, sending smoke and sparks hundreds of meters into the air. On the other side of the meadow, fire licked up the rock face as if searching for prey. It burned with such intensity that the heat cracked the stone itself, causing large chunks to fall into the peaceful pool in a loud cascade.

  "Much better!"
/>
  The ambitious young man had seen holopictures of Gammu and compared them with images of its earlier incarnation as Giedi Prime under the Harkonnens. Over the centuries his ancestral home had been ruined, falling into a state of agricultural primitivity. The hard-fought signs of civilization had faded into soft squalor.

  Now, with the cleansing odors of fire and smoke filling his nostrils, he wished he had bigger inferno guns and massive equipment: the means to reshape this entire planet. Given time, tools, and a proper workforce, he could turn backwater Caladan into a civilized place.

  In the process he could torch vast expanses of the verdant landscape to make way for new manufactories, landing fields, strip mines, and metals-processing plants. The mountains in the distance were ugly, too, with their white-capped summits. He would like to flatten the whole range with powerful explosives, cover it with factories to produce goods for export. And profit! Now that would really put Caladan on the galactic map.

  He would not entirely destroy the ecosystem, of course--not the way the Honored Matres did with their planet-burners. In remote areas, unsuitable for industry, he would leave enough plants to maintain the oxygen levels. The seas would have to provide enough fish and kelp for food, because importing supplies from offworld was prohibitively expensive.

  Caladan was such a waste now. How unadorned this world was . . . but how beautiful it could be with a little work. A great deal of work, actually. But it would be worth the effort, sculpting the homeworld of his mortal enemies--House Atreides--to his own vision. A Harkonnen vision.