Navigators of Dune

63

As Willem Atreides recovered from his injuries, he learned to his dismay that Vor had abandoned him on Chusuk. Bringing Tula Harkonnen to justice was supposed to have been their joint mission!

During his weeks of recuperation in a luxurious guest house at the Royal Bach Palais, the young man was restless even with the constant attentions of Princess Harmona and her excellent staff. He was impatient to be on the move again, to rejoin Vorian. He could not let his ancestor do everything himself.

Harmona obviously wanted him to stay. He longed for a normal life and a beautiful companion, thinking of her caring, charming personality as much as her physical beauty. She was everything he could have asked for, and more … but first he had a job to do. For Orry.

A paunchy male servant brought a tray of food for him and left it on a table in the sitting area. Willem thanked the man, though he didn’t feel much like eating. Feeling edgy, like a caged animal, he paced around the main room.

He and Vor had almost caught Tula Harkonnen, but now Vorian was pursuing her alone, without Willem. She killed Orry! I will not be left behind! He’d spoken of this to anyone in the palais who would listen, but Harmona’s personal physician was just as firm in requiring him to remain here, so that he could heal. Well, he had healed enough by now. Even with his undeniable feelings toward Harmona, he could not continue day after day in this velvet-lined prison. He might have forced the issue and left anytime he wished, but he had no resources of his own, and no ship that would let him follow Vorian Atreides.

He had only a written note from him, instructing him to remain safe on Chusuk until he received further word. Safe! His brother was dead and the murderer was still on the loose. “I intend to draw out the Harkonnens,” Vor had written.

Each day became more difficult than the previous one. Harmona was aware of his growing frustration, and they discussed his concerns. Each night he went to bed with troubling thoughts whirling through his mind, and lay awake for hours. In the mornings, he felt weary, with nothing resolved.

But he did enjoy his time with the princess, and Harmona was almost, almost enough to make him forget. Yet there were too many unresolved issues for him to drag her into his uncertain life. He had to ensure that Tula Harkonnen paid the price she owed.

But apparently Vor had mentioned going to Corrin, luring them there, facing his enemies, and keeping Willem safe … a plan that did not require Willem’s participation. Not if he had anything to say about it!

After knocking lightly, Harmona entered, wearing a maroon dress embroidered with the silver treble-clef crest of House Bach. Yet before she could even greet him, he stood and announced his decision in a firm tone. “I’m going to Corrin. That’s where Vorian went, and I can’t let him finish this without me.”

She looked at him with concern, but not surprise. “You’re not in peak condition yet. You should remain under a doctor’s care for a few more weeks.”

“I have been under his care for too long as far as I’m concerned, and now I am recovered enough. I’ll try to be careful, but I won’t let my injuries slow me down if I see Tula Harkonnen. As an Atreides, I have no choice after what she did.”

“I know.” Harmona nodded sadly. “House Bach can provide the funding you need, and I’ll make the arrangements to send you to Corrin.” She sighed. “I just hope and pray you will come back to me.”

BEFORE LEAVING SALUSA, Vor had liquidated another secret account to purchase a small spaceworthy ship, an antique from the Jihad era. He felt right at home in the vessel, and it reminded him of his beloved old craft, the Dream Voyager, enough that he mentally christened this one the New Voyager. The name was strictly for his own amusement, not marked on the hull or anywhere else; he kept the ship inconspicuous and managed to fly away with it unregistered, thanks to a large bribe. It was money well spent.

Despite its age, the craft was well maintained, and he was familiar with its inner workings. The New Voyager did not have Holtzman engines, but used a familiar workhorse FTL drive. If he’d been in a particular hurry, he could have bought passage aboard a larger EsconTran foldspace carrier. But the delay served his purposes. He had told his operatives to wait for two weeks before spreading the rumor in the Imperial Court that he’d gone to Corrin. By that time he would have arrived, and his preparations would be complete.

Pain echoed in his heart as he arrived at Corrin again. In his long lifetime he had lived so many years on so many worlds, experiencing loves and families and losses, but Corrin — the heart of the former Synchronized Empire — was where he had spent much of his youth, as a human with special privileges granted by his thinking-machine masters. Much later, Vorian Atreides had led the human forces back to destroy the place. Corrin was also where Abulurd Harkonnen had betrayed the Army of Humanity during the crucial moments at the Bridge of Hrethgir. That disgrace, that cowardice, had been the spark of the Atreides-Harkonnen feud.

Yes, it was fitting for him to be here now … and to lure the Harkonnens here.

After inoculating himself against residual radiation from the old atomic attack, he landed the New Voyager in a cleared area not far from the largest settlement. He donned protective filmgoggles against the harsh light of the red sun, and emerged into what had once been the glorious machine capital. He carried a satchel filled with clothing and small weapons that he might need to use in a pinch. If Valya or Tula came after him here, he needed to be ready.

Omnius’s prime city had been flattened in the nuclear blasts, but many twisted towers of exotic materials remained as silent sentinels over a dead empire. Strange, stunted flora struggled to grow on the destroyed landscape, achieving no more than feeble footholds. It would be centuries before this planet would thrive again, if ever. His skin tingled as he remembered his youth in this place, before he went away and fought in the Jihad, before the holocaust here. This stark, haunted landscape still had an aftertaste of humanity’s suffering.…

It was an unsettling homecoming. Everything he remembered here had been blasted into rubble more than eight decades ago — destroyed by his ships in the Army of Humanity. Even so, he had a strange, powerful feeling of belonging under the red giant sun. It would be fitting for the blood feud to end here.

If he could end it.

As Vor explored, heading toward the large settlement he had noticed in the ruins, he perspired under the harsh sunlight, but gradually grew acclimatized.

Scavengers now lived in the rubble in a makeshift settlement, and he introduced himself to a hard-bitten woman called Korla, the self-anointed Queen of Trash, the planetary leader. She had a dirty face, a tangle of black hair, and a stained, patched-together radiation suit that looked more suitable for a burn pile than for daily use. An unusual, silvery flowmetal cape curled around her shoulders, as if the garment were alive.

Several thousand ragged, worn-looking refugees scraped out a living on Corrin. The wreckage of the once-great machine cities contained riches and oddities for those who were willing to risk the effort to find them. Many were working the piles now, using tools to drill and dig.

Vor gave his real name, because he wanted to be sure the Harkonnens could follow the clues. It was clear, though, that neither Korla nor any of the other scavengers believed he was truly the legendary hero of the Jihad. The Corrin scavengers didn’t much care about a newcomer living there, though, so long as he posed no threat.

The real threat would be coming directly after him.

The husky-voiced leader led Vor up a rough, sloping pile of black slag. From the top of the mound, they saw scavengers mining scraps of flowmetal, using cutting tools and pulsing electronic devices. A pasty flow of the strange metallic substance oozed out of a cut the crew had made; Vor remembered the flowmetal used by the most sophisticated thinking machines long ago, but he had never seen these wild, unruly remnants.

The Queen of Trash nodded toward the group. “Our devices tune the collapsed flowmetal underpinnings to resonant frequencies, and that makes the substance mobile. Working together, my teams can coerce it into containers for shipping. It’ll be worth a fortune, if we ever resume regular trade throughout the Imperium again.”

That evening, Korla invited Vor to dine with her in an underground dwelling formed out of the frozen flowmetal to create a cavelike, sheltered place. The two sat at an irregular black table that had been shaped by cutting and grinding tools. Vor could hear the soft whirring of recirculating fans in the background.

“I don’t know why you came here, Vorian Atreides,” Korla said, making his authentic name sound like a fine joke, “but I assume you’ll tell me who you really are whenever it pleases you to do so. For now, whether you call yourself an emperor, a prince, or a legendary war hero, you’re one of us.”

After dinner, the scavengers led him through a maze of dim, hermetically sealed tunnels beneath the wrecked city. Vor would make himself a simple and basic home here, and would wait for his trap to spring.

He had no idea how long it would be before the Harkonnens took the bait, but he felt confident that they would.

Vor did not think Valya would arrive with a large force. Even though the two of them were sworn foes, as the leaders of their respective noble families they should engage in a one-on-one personal combat between them, to settle everything. Honor and tradition dictated that.

But, to play it safe against someone who hated him so much (and now he felt the same way toward her), all evening long Vor had been looking for places to set explosive charges throughout the tunnel system — tiny, undetectable devices that only he could detonate, if they were needed.