Road to Dune (50 page)

As Agamemnon flew out into open space, he would have enough time to think of appropriate explanations and shift the blame. He would include a version of the events in his ever-growing memoirs recorded in the machine database.

Fortunately, the all-powerful and all-seeing evermind simply wanted information and an accurate recounting of all events. Making excuses was a purely human weakness.

ON THE LEAGUE capital world of Salusa Secundus, a young boy looked up at dark-skinned Emil Tantor, a wealthy and influential nobleman. They stood on the front lawn of the sprawling Tantor estate, with the tallest buildings of the city visible in the distance. It was early evening, with lights twinkling on in the palatial homes that dotted the hills.

Ulf Harkonnen’s distress signal had finally been intercepted, and Emil Tantor had brought the boy the terrible news about his parents and brother. More casualties in the long-standing war against the thinking machines.

Young Xavier Harkonnen bowed his head, but refused to cry. The kindly nobleman touched his shoulder and spoke deep-throated, gentle words. “Will you have me, and Lucille, as your foster parents? I think it is what your father wanted when he left you in our care.”

Xavier looked into his brown eyes, nodded.

“You’ll grow into a fine young man,” Tantor said, “one to make your brother and parents proud. We will do our best to raise you right, to teach you honor and responsibility. You will make the Harkonnen name shine in the annals of history.”

Xavier gazed beyond his foster father up to the faint stars glimmering through the dusk. He could identify some of those stars, and knew which systems were controlled by Omnius and which were League worlds.

“I will also learn how to fight the thinking machines,” he said. Emil Tantor squeezed his shoulder. “I will defeat them one day.”

It is my purpose in life.

ON A DARK night in the bright snowfield and dark pines, the Caladan primitives sat on furs around a roaring fire. Keeping their oral tradition alive, they repeated the ancient legends and stories of recent battles. The elder Tiddoc sat beside the foreigner accepted among them, a hero with bright eyes and waxy, horribly scarred skin. A man who had fought single-handedly against a cymek monster and fallen into a scalding hot opening … but had crawled out alive, clinging to the battered cymek walker-form. Piers gestured with one hand; the other—burned and twisted into uselessness—hung limp against his chest. He spoke passionately in the ancient Buddislamic tongue, halting as he struggled for words and then continuing when Tiddoc helped him.

Caladan was his home now, and he would live the rest of his life with these people, in obscurity. No escape seemed possible from such a remote place, except through the stories he told. Piers kept his audience enthralled as he spoke of great battles against the thinking machines, while he also learned the Songs of the Long Trek, chronicles of the many generations of Zensunni Wanderings.

As his father had realized, Piers Harkonnen had always wanted to be a storyteller.

WHIPPING MEK

A Tale of the Butlerian Jihad

W
hen the armored Jihad warship arrived, the population of Giedi Prime expected news of a great victory against the evil thinking machines. But with only a glance at the battle-scarred vessel, young Vergyl Tantor could tell that the defense of Peridot Colony had not gone at all as planned.

On the crowded fringe of Giedi City Spaceport, Vergyl rushed forward, pressing against the soldiers stuck there like himself: wide-eyed green recruits or veterans too old to be sent into battle against Omnius’s combat robots. His heart hammered like an industrial piston in his chest.

He prayed that his adoptive brother, Xavier Harkonnen, was all right.

The damaged battleship heaved itself into the docking circle like a dying sea beast beached on a reef. The big engines hissed and groaned as they cooled from the hot descent through the atmosphere.

Vergyl stared at the blackened scars on the hull plates and tried to imagine the kinetic weapons and high-energy projectiles that combat robots had hurled at the brave jihadi defenders.

If only he had been out there himself, Vergyl could have helped in the fight. But Xavier—the commander of the battle group—always seemed to fight against his brother’s eagerness with nearly as much persistence as he fought the machine enemy.

When the landing systems finished locking down, dozens of egress hatches opened on the lower hull. Middle-ranking commanders emerged, bellowing for assistance. All medically qualified personnel were called in from the city; others were shuttled from across the continents of Giedi Prime to help the wounded soldiers and rescued colonists.

Triage and assessment stations were set up on the spaceport grounds. Official military personnel were tended first, since they had pledged their lives to fight in the great struggle ignited by Serena Butler. Their crimson-and-green uniforms were stained and badly patched; they’d obviously had no chance to repair them during the many weeks of transit from Peridot Colony. Mercenary soldiers received second-priority treatment, along with the refugees from the colony.

Vergyl rushed in with the other ground-based soldiers to help, his large brown eyes flicking back and forth in search of answers. He needed to find someone who could tell him what had happened to Segundo Harkonnen. Worry scratched at Vergyl’s mind while he worked. Perhaps everything was all right … but what if his big brother had been killed in a heroic rally? Or what if Xavier was injured, yet remained aboard the battered ship, refusing to accept help for himself until all of his personnel were tended to? Either scenario would have fit Xavier’s personality.

For hours, Vergyl refused to slow down, unable to fully grasp what these jihadi fighters had been through. Sweating and exhausted, he worked himself into a trancelike stupor, following orders, helping the wounded, burned, and despairing refugees.

He heard muttered conversations that told of the onslaught that had wiped out the small colony. When the thinking machines had attempted to absorb the settlement into the Synchronized Worlds, the Army of the Jihad had sent its defenders there.

Peridot Colony had been but a skirmish, however, like so many others in the dozen years since Serena Butler had originally rallied all humans to fight in her cause, after the thinking machines had murdered her young son, Manion.
Xavier’s son.

The ebb and flow of the Jihad had caused a great deal of damage to both sides, but neither fighting force had gained a clear upper hand. And though the thinking machines continued to build fresh combat robots, lost human lives could never be replaced. Serena gave passionate speeches to recruit new soldiers for her holy war. So many fighters had died that the Jihad no longer publicly revealed the cost. The struggle was everything.

Following the Honru Massacre seven years earlier, Vergyl had insisted on joining the Jihad military force himself. He considered it his duty as a human being, even without his connection to Xavier and the martyred child, Manion. At their estate on Salusa Secundus, his parents had tried to make the young man wait, since he was barely seventeen, but Vergyl would hear none of it.

Returning to Salusa after a difficult skirmish, Xavier had surprised their parents by offering a waiver that would allow underage Vergyl to begin training in the Army. The young man had leaped at the opportunity, not guessing that Xavier had his own plans. Overprotective, Segundo Harkonnen had seen to it that Vergyl received a safe, quiet assignment, stationed here on Giedi Prime where he could help with the rebuilding work—and where he would stay safe, far from any pitched battles against the robotic enemy.

Now Vergyl had been in Giedi City for years, rising minimally in rank to second decero in the Construction Brigade … never seeing any action. Meanwhile, Xavier Harkonnen’s battleships went to planet after planet, protecting free humanity and destroying the mechanized legions of the computer evermind Omnius … .

Vergyl stopped counting all the bodies he’d moved. Perspiring in his dark green uniform, the young construction officer and a civilian man carried a makeshift stretcher, hauling a wounded mother who had been rescued from her devastated prefab home on Peridot Colony. Women and children from Giedi City hurried among the workers and wounded, offering water and food.

Finally, in the warm afternoon, a ragged cheer penetrated Vergyl’s dazed focus, just as he set the stretcher down in the midst of a triage unit. Looking up, he drew a quick breath. At the warship’s main entrance ramp, a proud military commander stepped forward into the sunshine of Giedi Prime.

Segundo Xavier Harkonnen wore a clean uniform with immaculate golden insignia. By careful design, he cut a dashing military figure, one that would inspire confidence and faith among his own troops as well as the civilians of Giedi City. Fear was the worst enemy the machines could bring against them. Xavier never offered any observer reason for uncertainty: Yes, brave humanity would eventually win this war.

Grinning, Vergyl let out a sigh as all his doubts evaporated. Of course Xavier had survived. This great man had led the strike force that liberated Giedi Prime from the enslavement of cymeks and thinking machines. Xavier had commanded the human forces in the atomic purification of Earth, the first great battle of Serena Butler’s Jihad.

And the heroic officer would never stop until the thinking machines were defeated.

But as Vergyl watched his brother walk down the ramp, he noticed that his footsteps had a heavy, weary quality, and his familiar face looked shell-shocked. Not even a hint of a smile there, no gleam in his gray eyes. Just flat stoniness. How had the man gotten so old? Vergyl idolized him, needed to speak with him alone as a brother, so that he could learn the real story.

But in public, Segundo Harkonnen would never let anyone see his inner feelings. He was too good a leader for that.

Vergyl pushed his way through the throng, shouting and waving with the others, and finally Xavier recognized him in the sea of faces. His expression lit with joy, then crashed, as if weighed down by the burden of war memories and realizations. Vergyl and his fellow relief workers hurried up the ramp to surround the brave officer, and escorted him into the safety of Giedi City.

ALONG WITH HIS surviving sub-commanders, Xavier Harkonnen spent hours dispensing reports and debriefing League officials, but he insisted on breaking away from these painful duties to spend a few hours with his brother.

He arrived at Vergyl’s small home unrested, eyes bloodshot and haunted. When the two of them hugged, Xavier remained stiff for a moment before weakening and returning his dark-skinned brother’s embrace. Despite the physical dissimilarities that marked their separate racial heritage, they knew that the bonds of love had nothing to do with bloodlines and everything to do with the loving family experiences they had shared in the household of Emil and Lucille Tantor. Taking him inside, Vergyl could sense the tremors Xavier was suppressing. He distracted Xavier by introducing him to his wife of two years, whom Xavier had never met.

Sheel was a young, dark-haired beauty not accustomed to receiving guests of such importance. She had not even traveled to Salusa Secundus to meet Vergyl’s parents or to see the Tantor family estate. But she treated Xavier as her husband’s welcome brother, instead of as a celebrity.

One of Aurelius Venport’s merchant ships had arrived only a week before, carrying melange from Arrakis. Sheel had gone out this afternoon and spent a week’s pay to get enough of the expensive spice to add to the fine, special dinner she prepared.

As they ate, their conversation remained subdued and casual, avoiding any mention of war news. Weary to the bone, Xavier barely seemed to notice the flavors of the meal, even the exotic melange. Sheel seemed disappointed, until Vergyl explained in a whisper that his brother had lost much of his sense of taste and smell during a cymek gas attack, which had also cost him his lungs. Although Xavier now breathed through a set of replacement organs provided by a Tlulaxa flesh merchant, his ability to taste or smell remained dulled.

Finally, as they drank spice-laced coffee, Vergyl could no longer withhold his questions. “Xavier, please tell me what happened at Peridot Colony. Was it a victory, or did the”—his voice caught—“did the machines defeat us?”

Xavier lifted his head, and gazed far away. “Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo says that there are no defeats. Only victories and … moral victories. This one fell into the latter category.”

Sheel squeezed her husband’s arm sharply, a wordless request that he withdraw the question. But Vergyl didn’t interrupt, and Xavier continued, “Peridot Colony had been under attack for a week before our nearest battle group received the emergency distress call. Settlers were being obliterated. The thinking machines meant to crush the colony and establish a Synchronized World there, laying down their infrastructure and installing a new copy of the Omnius evermind.”

Xavier sipped spice coffee while Vergyl put his elbows on the table, leaning close to listen with rapt attention.

“The Army of the Jihad had little presence in this area aside from my warship and a handful of troops. We had no choice but to respond, not wishing to lose another planet. I had a full shipload of mercenaries anyway.”

“Any from Ginaz? Our best fighters?”

“Some. We arrived faster than the thinking machines expected, struck them swiftly and mercilessly, using everything we had. My soldiers attacked like madmen, and many of them fell. But a lot more thinking machines were destroyed. Unfortunately, most of the colony towns had already been trampled by the time we got there, the inhabitants murdered. Even so, our Army of the Jihad drove in—and by a holy miracle we pushed back the enemy forces.” He drew a deep, convulsing breath, as if his replacement lungs were malfunctioning.

“Instead of simply cutting their losses and flying away, as combat robots usually do, this time they were programmed to follow a scorched-earth policy. They devastated everything in their wake. Where they had gone, not a crop, structure, or human survivor was left behind.”