Dune: The Machine Crusade (97 page)

The cockpit had grown intensely hot. Failing circulation systems groaned and shuddered in an unsuccessful attempt to battle the thermal overloads. Each breath was like fire in Xavier’s lungs.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the dazzle and heat still burned his optic nerves. Xavier considered this a fitting funeral pyre for himself and Iblis.

Iblis kept screaming as the ship flew into the heart of the sun.

I
mmense bulbous shapes towered around Norma Cenva, a veritable city of her imagination coming to life as the spacefolders were modified or constructed from scratch. Infused with a massive military work force, substantial League funding, and a new sense of urgency from the rejuvenated Jihad, work at the Kolhar shipyards proceeded at a breathtaking pace. Norma’s dream was becoming a reality.

The shipyards stretched for more than a thousand kilometers in each direction, a bustling manufacturing facility laid out on a colossal grid that covered the once-marshy plains of Kolhar. Work areas were connected by high-speed suspensor trams, with white capsules speeding along unseen tracks.

Even so, Norma had never felt so lost and empty. She stood beside her intense, eight-year-old son Adrien in the shadow of one of the colossal vessels, with tears streaming down her lovely face. The Jihad officer waited uncomfortably in front of her, grim from the news he had brought.

I saw this in my vision. I knew I would never see Aurelius again.

Norma needed to set her personal concerns aside now. It was much too late to regret how little time she had actually spent with her husband, and how many years she had lost of her own life due to the war. She had a great deal of work to do, trying to solve the dangerous navigation problems. Otherwise, many jihad is and mercenaries would die.

I must make my other, grand vision come true as well.

So far, thirty-seven military spacecraft had been retrofitted or built from scratch. Another fifty-three were under construction and would soon be finished. The towering frameworks, in various stages of completion, were black, draped with gold-and-silver League banners. A jungle of suspensor scaffolds and work barges floated in the air around each ship.

Even though they had commandeered the entire fleet of VenKee space-folders, Jihad military authorities were still allowing VenKee Enterprises to ship considerable amounts of merchandise on a standby basis. Luckily, there had been no devastating accidents so far, but it was only a matter of time.

Those successful cargo runs had been going on for months now, keeping the VenKee cash flow going… and also allowing shipments of melange to continue to the many nobles who had become dependent on their daily spice. Because Parliamentary representatives demanded increased supplies of melange, it was possible that the Army of the Jihad would allow VenKee to keep a few space-folding ships to serve them, based on the “urgent needs” of the League. In the meantime, Norma had also dispatched dozens of standard slow-speed commercial vessels to continue the flow of necessary materials.

Thanks to the concessions that Aurelius had negotiated, VenKee Enterprises would survive. Perhaps even thrive eventually. But their luck had to hold….

Norma wiped her tears away, but more replaced them. It was such a human reaction. She was accustomed to burying herself in her work, which enabled her to escape the mundane interactions and petty conflicts of personal relationships, business, and politics. Now though her copious mind could envision journeys across a folded universe, she could not escape a terrible personal reality.

“A League investigation team gathered evidence at the asteroid impact site on Ginaz,” the officer said, his voice filled with sadness. Norma did not even know his name. “Tens of thousands are dead in the archipelago, many of them talented mercenaries. I don’t expect we will ever learn precisely what took place.”

Norma had no doubt of the veracity of the news. A cool wind from the plains blew the officer’s dark hair over his forehead, almost into his eyes. He cleared his throat. “We’ve found some evidence of a concerted cymek attack in the asteroid field. Your husband and your mother were scheduled to be in the vicinity.”

“I already know what happened to them,” Norma said. “I saw it in a… prescient vision. I believe you will find it fits with the evidence you have.” She explained what she had witnessed after her heavy spice consumption.

Fighting back her emotions, Norma shook her head at the terrible waste. Two incredibly talented people were gone. Adrien was just old enough to understand. In silence, the boy stood close to his mother.

Gazing at her son, Norma saw a thinner, younger version of Aurelius, immersed in an ocean of grief. She set her jaw. “We must work even harder now. You and I, Adrien, are the ones who will maintain your father’s legacy.”

“I know, Mother. The big ships.” The boy drew closer and reached up to put his arm around her waist. He had the potential to be as brilliant as she was, and as capable with business matters as his father.

Norma nodded. “We will form a powerful trading company to use those ships. We must think of the future.”

B
ruised and heartsick after learning of Serena’s horrific death, Vorian Atreides returned to Caladan. He had no military mission or plan, only a personal one. Long, long ago he had watched Serena slip through his grasp, and did not intend to let the same thing happen again. He had found another woman who was precious to him.

Leronica
.

Why not just retire from the Jihad, turn his back on the fighting, and let others manage the war? He had already fought for four decades…. Wasn’t that enough? Especially now that an outraged humanity had been ignited to seek vengeance on behalf of their Priestess.

On Caladan, with Leronica, he could forget it all for a while. It wasn’t a genuine rest or recovery, just a numb avoidance of memories. But it was better than nothing. Then he would return to the war, as always.

She was approaching forty standard years old, her twin sons nearly ten— but Vor had not changed visibly since the age of twenty-one, when Agamemnon gave him the painful immortality treatment. Within a few years Leronica would look old enough to be his mother, but he didn’t care. That had never mattered to him. He could only hope that she herself wouldn’t be overly concerned about his appearance, or about her own.

When Vor arrived again at Leronica’s tavern, she seemed astonished that he had returned so soon. She rushed to embrace him, then pulled back and studied the pain and disaster in his eyes. Something was different. No jokes, no casual saunter, no happy swinging her around in a playful hug.

Vor just hugged her and said nothing for a long time. “I will tell you eventually, Leronica… but not now.”

“Take whatever time you need. You’re always welcome here. Stay with me, if you like.”

In the ensuing days, Vor spent hours down by the docks, staring at the hypnotic, peaceful ocean. At times Leronica would sit beside him, or she would go back to work and leave him to contemplate the strange paths he had taken in his life. One of the Caladan fishermen even took him out on a boat for a day, and he found that he enjoyed the hard but honest work, as well as the simple satisfaction of eating fresh fish that he had caught himself.

The boys, Estes and Kagin, became quite fond of him without knowing the truth. Vor’s heart swelled when he remembered everything Xavier Harkonnen had told him about his own family life with Octa, things that Vor had never been able to understand… until now.

“You should have remarried, Leronica,” he said to her one evening as they walked along a rocky beach. “You deserve happiness, and so do your boys. I’ve met a number of Caladan men who could be excellent candidates.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’ve been a widow for little more than a year. Are you complaining that I’m still available?”

“Not complaining, just disbelieving. Are the villagers and fishermen blind to what stands in front of their eyes?”

“Many are.” She gave him a teasing smile, then put her hands on her hips. “Besides, you’re hardly one to teach me how to live my life. I will wait for however long I choose… until the right man catches my eye.” She stretched to kiss him. “In your letters about exotic adventures and remarkable places, I saw much of the universe. Caladan is a fine world, but you’ve given me a taste of the stars that have always been beyond my reach.”

Wistfully, she gazed out on the endless calm water. “I grow impatient with this place, this life. I want more for my sons. When I think of the League of Nobles, the cities on Salusa Secundus and Giedi Prime, I imagine Estes and Kagin as senators, doctors, or even artists with noble patrons. Here on Caladan, they’re destined to become no more than fishermen. I don’t want them to be content with small ambitions.”

DESPITE THE PEACE and solitude, Vor could not escape the Jihad. Every portion of humanity had been inflamed by Serena’s martyrdom, and the rebellious cymeks— including his own father Agamemnon— had struck deep blows against the evermind. With concerted action, Vor felt that the Army of the Jihad could actually overthrow the computers now. But a difficult fight remained….

When the Jihad messenger came to Caladan, he knew exactly where to find Vor. In his final instructions, Primero Harkonnen had told him where to look.

Vor felt queasy when he saw the uniformed man hurrying toward him on the beach. Quinto Paolo’s face was flushed with the importance of his mission. He found Vor sitting on a shore rock, listening to the rushing lullaby of the incoming tide. “Primero Atreides! I bring an urgent and private message from Primero Harkonnen.”

Leronica stepped away to provide the men with privacy. “I need to get back to the tavern. You two discuss your military secrets—”

But Vor caught her wrist and kept her with him. “I have no secrets from you.” He turned to the low-ranking officer and waited.

“I came directly from Tlulax. Primero Harkonnen dispatched me urgently. He commanded that I was not to go to Zimia or to give my message to anyone else in the Army of the Jihad. He fears his words will be corrupted. Instead, he said I would find you on Caladan, with this woman.”

Vor’s heart pounded, knowing that Primero Xavier Harkonnen would never bypass protocol lightly.

Paolo said, “The Primero told me, ‘It is enough for my good friend Vorian to learn the truth.’”

The young officer held a flat, sealed package in his white-knuckled hands. He seemed to be trying to stand at attention and maintain calm breathing, but his entire body looked stiff. Such military protocol might have been important to Xavier, but Vor just wanted to hear his news. “Out with it, Quinto. What is the message?”

Paolo swallowed hard. “He wrote this quickly while I watched, and sent me off before the Grand Patriarch’s Jipol could stop me. I barely got away. Now I fear for Primero Harkonnen’s safety. I… shouldn’t have left him, but he ordered me.”

Vor tore open the wrapped package. Oddly, it had no security seals or encryption. It was simply a scrawled note. When Vor later thought back on this moment, this fact alone told him a great deal about the desperation Xavier must have felt.

As a sea breeze flapped the paper in his hand, Vor read with widening eyes: the deception of the Tlulaxa organ farms, the purported thinking-machine attacks on Chusuk, Rhisso, and Balut that were really committed by Iblis Ginjo’s secret police— slaughtering humans, harvesting their organs as needed, and casting the blame on Omnius. And the planned next strike on Caladan itself.

Here!

He recalled the charnel house he had seen on Chusuk, in contrast with the beauty of this pristine ocean world. “You bastard, Iblis.” His nostrils flared as he thought about what he would do to the Grand Patriarch as soon as he came close enough to wrap iron-hard fingers around his neck.

He read on. Xavier described what he intended to do, how he meant to destroy the charming, potent poison of Iblis Ginjo, undertaking one final heroic deed. The old Primero understood how the League populace was likely to think of him afterward— a fanatic, a traitor, a murderer of their beloved Grand Patriarch— but Xavier didn’t care about any posthumous disgrace. Or glory, if the complete truth ever came out.

Murderer
?

Like Xavier, Vor recognized the massive engine of myth and deception that Iblis Ginjo had created… a full cadre of secret police and fanatical Jihad fighters to maintain the illusion of Priestess Serena Butler and her devoted Grand Patriarch, Iblis Ginjo.

At his side, Quinto Paolo cleared his throat. “Primero Harkonnen flew his ship into the sun, taking the Grand Patriarch with him.”

The implications struck home, and Vor realized all the traps he could still stumble upon. Nothing was true or fair, and reality was not as black and white as Xavier always assumed it should be.

Iblis had spent decades laying networks across the League of Nobles, and they could not easily be erased. Worse, if the truth were ever widely known, no matter how terrible, the resulting scandal would destroy the momentum Serena had achieved as a martyr in the crusade against the thinking machines. Her followers would fight amongst themselves instead of against Omnius.

Vor clenched his hands together tightly. He could not do that to her memory, so he alone would keep the truth about Xavier. He hoped his friend would understand.

At least Iblis Ginjo was gone.

Another problem: how to deal with the Tlulaxa, who were the vilest of criminals? Even though the Grand Patriarch was dead, his secretive collaborators remained.

Vor needed to expose what the organ farms really were, bringing disgrace and ruin to the Tlulaxa. Yes… they could serve as scapegoats, but deserving ones. As soon as the public discovered the horrific deception, they would view the flesh merchants with complete disgust. The organ farms would be destroyed, and slaves who had served as living flesh reservoirs would be freed… one way or another.