Hunters of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  He and young Vladimir were taken to temporary quarters in a hostelry on the outskirts of the village. The boy ghola complained that he wanted to throw rocks in the water and at the boats, or poke into the market stalls where sellers gutted the fish, but Uxtal made excuses, delaying the restless child while they waited in their chilly, rustic room. Vladimir began to ransack every cabinet and hiding place he could find. Uxtal clung to the knowledge that at least the Honored Matres were far away.

  A nondescript man appeared at the door of their room. He looked like any other villager, but a rash of goose bumps stippled Uxtal’s skin. “I have come to take the Baron ghola. We must test him.”

  He heard an odd sound, as of bones cracking and shifting. The man’s face metamorphosed until the blank cadaverous face of Khrone stared back at him with ink-pit eyes.

  “Y-yes,” Uxtal said. “The boy is progressing quite nicely. Seven years old now. However, it would be very helpful to me if I knew what you want him for. Very helpful.”

  Vladimir watched the Face Dancer with curious awe. He had never seen one of the shape-shifters revert to its blank state. “Great trick. Can you teach me to change my face like that?”

  “No.” Khrone turned back to the Tleilaxu. “When I originally asked you to grow this ghola, I did not know who he was. When I learned his identity, I still did not know if the Baron Harkonnen would do us any good, but I thought that he might. Now I have discovered a wonderful possibility.” He took the boy’s hand, and led him away. “Wait here, Uxtal.”

  So the diminutive researcher remained alone in his primitive room, wondering how much longer he would be permitted to live. In another situation he might have enjoyed the moment of peace, the quiet relaxation, but he was too afraid. What if the Face Dancers found some flaw in the ghola? Why did they need him here on Dan? Would Khrone throw him back into the clutches of Matre Superior Hellica? The Face Dancers had left him among the Honored Matres for years. Uxtal didn’t know how much more he could stand. He couldn’t believe Hellica had let him live, or that the withered old Ingva hadn’t yet tried to bond him sexually. He closed his eyes and swallowed the moan in his throat. So many things could go wrong if he went back there. . . .

  To calm himself, he began a traditional cleansing ritual. Standing next to an open window and facing the ocean, he dipped a white cloth into a bowl of water and washed his naked chest. It had been so long since he’d been able to adequately perform the personal bodily ablutions required by his religion. People were always spying on him, intimidating him. After he finished, Uxtal meditated outside on a small wooden balcony that overlooked the fishing village. He prayed by mentally rearranging numbers and signs, searching for the truth in the holy patterns.

  The door of the room burst open and the ghola child ran in, flushed and laughing. He carried a dripping knife and dodged among the rough furniture as if playing some sort of game. His clothes were covered in wet mud and blood.

  Khrone followed the boy into the room at a more sedate pace, carrying a small parcel in his arms. He had reverted to his innocuous guise of a bland-featured man. Chuckling, young Vladimir called for Khrone to hurry.

  Uxtal quickly intercepted the boy. “What are you doing with that knife?” He extended a hand to take the weapon away.

  “I was playing with a baby slig. They have a little pen of them in the village, but none of them are big, like back home.” He grinned. “I jumped in with them and stabbed a few.” He wiped the blade on his own trousers and handed it to the Tleilaxu, who set it out of reach atop a tall wardrobe.

  Khrone looked contemplatively at the bloodstains. “I am not averse to violence, but it must be directed violence. Constructive violence. This ghola has little self-control. He is in need of behavioral modifications.”

  Uxtal tried to deflect the conversation from the implied criticism. “Why did he grab a knife and jump into a slig pen?”

  “He was influenced by our conversation. I was discussing our discovery with my comrades, and the boy drew inspiration from the object. He seems to have a fondness for knives.”

  “Matre Superior Hellica taught him that.” Uxtal swallowed hard. “I have read his cellular history. The original Baron Harkonnen was—”

  “I know everything about the original. He has excellent potential for what I have in mind now. Our plans have changed because of what we’ve discovered here on Dan.”

  Uxtal stared at the mysterious parcel in the Face Dancer’s hands. “And what have you found?”

  Though his gash-mouth did not smile, Khrone seemed very pleased. He began to unwrap the object. “Another solution to our crisis.”

  “Which crisis?”

  “One you cannot understand.”

  Feeling chastised, Uxtal bit back further questions, and stared as Khrone revealed another knife, this one ornate and sealed inside a clear plaz container. The weapon had a jeweled handle with intricate designs carved into it; the blade itself bore etched letters and symbols from an ancient language, but the words were obscured by a thick smear of crimson. Blood, barely oxidized. He leaned closer. It still looked moist inside its preservative cover.

  “This is an ancient weapon—thousands of years old—sealed inside a nullentropy field until today, hidden and protected over the centuries by a succession of religious fanatics.”

  “Is that blood?” Uxtal asked.

  “I prefer to call it genetic material.” Gingerly, the Face Dancer set the artifact on the table. “We discovered it in a long-sealed religious shrine here on Dan, watched over by remnants of the Fish Speakers, who have now joined the Cult of Sheeana. The dagger is stained with the blood of Paul Atreides.”

  “Muad’Dib! The father of the Prophet Himself, Leto II, the God Emperor.”

  “Yes, the messiah who led Fremen warriors in a great jihad. A Kwisatz Haderach. We need him.”

  “Because of the nullentropy field, the blood of Muad’Dib is still wet . . . fresh,” Uxtal said, quivering in excitement. “Perfectly preserved.”

  “Ah, so you see where this is leading. There is hope for you yet. You may be useful after all.”

  “Yes, I am useful! Let me show you. But . . . but I need to know more about what you want.”

  At a hand gesture from their leader, two more Face Dancers entered the room, leading a wrung-out woman who wore a deep blue dress; her brown hair hung in stringy clumps. As she drew near, Uxtal noted the famous Atreides crest of long ago, a red braided hawk, on the left breast of her dress. When she saw the preserved dagger, the woman struggled against her captors. She didn’t seem to care about the Face Dancers or anyone—only the knife.

  Khrone prodded her. “Speak, Priestess. Tell this man the story of your holy knife so that he may understand.”

  She looked at Uxtal briefly, then turned her worshipful gaze back toward the dagger. “I am Ardath, formerly a Fish Speaker priestess, now servant of Sheeana. Long ago, the evil Count Hasimir Fenring attempted to assassinate the blessed Muad’Dib with this dagger. The weapon belonged to Emperor Shaddam IV, was given to Duke Leto Atreides as a gift, and then returned to Shaddam during his trial before the Landsraad. Later, Emperor Shaddam offered the dagger to Feyd-Rautha for his duel with Muad’Dib.” Priestess Ardath seemed to be reciting often-rehearsed scripture.

  “Later, during Muad’Dib’s jihad, an exiled Hasimir Fenring—himself a failed Kwisatz Haderach—acquired the dagger. In a vile plot, he stabbed Muad’Dib deeply in the back. Some say that he died that day from the wound, but that Heaven sent him back among the living, for his work was not yet done. In a miracle he returned to us.”

  “And Muad’Dib’s fanatics preserved the bloody knife as a religious artifact,” Khrone finished impatiently. “It was taken to a shrine here on Caladan, home of House Atreides, where it remained hidden for all these years. You can already guess what we want you to do, Tleilaxu. Deactivate the nullentropy field, take cell samples—”

  Ardath tore herself free of her guards and dropped to her knees in prayer, le
aning toward the ancient relic. “Please, you cannot tamper with such a holy article.”

  At a gesture from Khrone, one of the Face Dancers grabbed her head and twisted it sharply, snapping her neck. He dropped her to the floor like a discarded doll. As they dragged the dead priestess away, Uxtal gave the female no more than a passing thought, since she was irrelevant. Instead, he was intrigued by the possibilities of the lovely, preserved dagger. Her prattling had been distracting anyway.

  He came closer and picked up the sealed dagger with shaking hands, tilting it so that light glistened off the wet blade. The cells of Muad’Dib! The possibilities astounded him.

  Khrone said, “Now you have another ghola project to work on, along with raising Baron Harkonnen. Back to Tleilax with you both—for as many years as it takes.” More Face Dancers came into the room. “When the time is right, we will have a much more useful purpose for the Baron.”

  The Honored Matre defenses on Buzzell are minimal. We can simply stroll in and take over. Another symptom of their arrogance.

  —BASHAR WIKKI AZTIN,

  military advisor to Mother Commander Murbella

  T

  he first new armored vessels arrived from Richese exactly as Murbella had ordered, sixty-seven warships designed for space combat and troop transport, heavily loaded with weaponry. The Mother Commander had also paid the appropriate bribes in spice for a Guildship to transport them directly and unexpectedly to Buzzell. It was the first of what she hoped would be many conquests over the renegade Honored Matres.

  The weapons shops of Richese, thrilled with the enormous order for armaments, worked overtime to create military equipment of every possible design and efficacy. When the outside threat did arrive in the Old Empire, they would not find the human race unprepared or undefended.

  First, however, the restructured Sisterhood had to quash the destructive resistance here at home. We must clean the slate before the real Enemy arrives.

  In deep consultation with Bellonda, Doria, and Janess, Murbella had chosen this first campaign carefully. Now that her Valkyries had eradicated the malcontents on Chapterhouse, the well-trained women were ready for another target. Buzzell was perfect, both for its strategic and its economic importance. The Honored Matres were haughty and overconfident, making their defenses vulnerable. Murbella intended to show them no mercy.

  She did not know the precise disposition or distribution of Honored Matre defenses around Buzzell, but she could guess. Sitting inside their ships lurking within the hold of the great Guildship, all of her Valkyries were ready to be deployed.

  As soon as the Guildship emerged from foldspace, its lower doors yawned open. The women neither asked for nor received further instructions, since they knew what to do: Find priority targets and destroy them. Sixty-seven vessels, all equipped with cutting-edge weapons technology, poured out and opened fire with projectiles and targeted explosives that began shredding the fifteen large Honored Matre frigates stationed in orbit. The Honored Matres had no time to react—and barely enough time to bellow their outrage over the commsystems. In ten minutes, the bombardment turned every single vessel into lifeless, floating scrap metal. Buzzell was now undefended.

  “Mother Commander! A dozen unaligned ships are flying away from the atmosphere. A different design . . . they don’t appear to be combat craft.”

  “Smugglers,” Murbella said. “Soostones are valuable, so there will always be smugglers.”

  “Shall we destroy them, Mother Commander? Or seize their cargoes?”

  “Neither.” She watched the tiny ships flitting away from the ocean world. If the smugglers had proved to be a significant drain on the soostone wealth, the Honored Matres would never have let them survive. “We have a more important target down there. We’ll oust the Honored Matres and negotiate with the smugglers afterward.”

  She led the warships to their formal conquest of the few specks of habitable land on the vast, fertile ocean.

  Buzzell had long been used as a Bene Gesserit punishment planet where the Sisterhood discarded those who had disappointed them, women who had failed the ancient order in some manner. The ocean world wasn’t much to look at, but the rich, deep sea was home to shelled creatures, called cholisters, that produced elegant gems.

  Soostones. Noble women flaunted them; collectors and artisans paid inflated prices for them.

  Like Rakis, she thought. Ironic, that the worst places produce the items of greatest value.

  The Honored Matres’ inexorable search for wealth had drawn their attentions to Buzzell years ago. After the whores overran the islands on the vast oceans, they had killed most of the disgraced Bene Gesserit Sisters and forced the survivors to harvest soostones for them.

  Now, assisted by orbital surveillance, Murbella easily determined which were the main inhabited landmasses barely poking above the waves. The New Sisterhood would recapture the nerve centers of soostone activity from the Honored Matres. Soon, Buzzell would have different leaders.

  The Richesian battle craft landed around the primary soostone-processing encampment. Such a great number of vessels overwhelmed the tiny landing area and most were forced to rely on inflatable pontoons, raft piers, and simple suspensor fields on the water. Ships encircled the rocky island like a noose.

  As it turned out, apart from the frigates in orbit, barely more than a hundred of the whores held the facilities of Buzzell in their iron grip. When the Valkyries arrived, the Honored Matres who lived on this island in the finest (though still spartan) buildings, rushed out, fully armed. Though they fought viciously, the women were greatly outnumbered and outmatched. Murbella’s fighters easily assassinated half of them before the rest capitulated. The losses were expected.

  The Mother Commander strode out into the biting, salty air to begin surveying the sparse world she had just conquered.

  When the fighters rounded up the surviving Honored Matres, Murbella discovered nine women who clearly did not belong among them, downtrodden yet proud in tattered black robes. Bene Gesserit. Only nine! Buzzell had been a punishment planet for well over a hundred Sisters . . . and only nine had survived the whores.

  Murbella stalked back and forth, looking at the gathered women. Her Valkyries stood in formation behind her, their black singlesuit uniforms embellished with sharp black spikes, used as ornamentation and as weapons. The Honored Matres looked defiant, murderous—exactly as Murbella expected. The captive Sisters averted their eyes, having spent so many years in the yoke of oppressive mistresses.

  “I am your new commander. Who among you claimed to lead these women?” She swept a whipsaw gaze across them. “Who will be my underling here?”

  “We are not underlings,” one sinewy Honored Matre sneered, spoiling for a fight. “We don’t know you, nor do we recognize your authority. You act like an Honored Matre, but you have the smell of witches about you. I don’t think you are either.”

  So Murbella killed her.

  The Honored Matre leader had persecuted Sisters here for years. Her kicks and blows were swift, but insufficient in the face of Murbella’s combined training. With a broken neck, snapped ribs, and blood oozing from burst eardrums, the arrogant woman dropped dead to the black stones of the reef settlement.

  Murbella never broke a sweat. She turned to the others. “Now, who speaks for you? Who will be my first underling?”

  One of the other Honored Matres stepped forward. “I am Matre Skira. Ask your questions of me.”

  “I will know about the soostones and your operations here. We need to know how to extract profits from Buzzell.”

  “The soostones are ours,” Skira said. “This planet is—”

  Murbella dealt her a blow across the chin so swiftly that it sent the woman reeling backward before she could raise a hand to defend herself. Looming over her like a bird of prey, Murbella said, “I ask again: Explain the soostone operations to me.”

  One of the downtrodden Bene Gesserits broke from her line. A middle-aged woman with ash-blonde hair,
she had a worn face that must once have been strikingly beautiful. “I can explain it to you.”

  Skira scuttled like a crab onto her elbows trying to get to her feet. “Don’t listen to that cow. She’s a prisoner, fit for beating and nothing else.”

  “I am called Corysta,” the blonde said, ignoring Skira.

  Murbella nodded. “I am Mother Commander of the New Sisterhood. Mother Superior Odrade herself chose me as her successor before she was killed in the Battle of Junction. I have unified Bene Gesserits and Honored Matres to stand against our common, deadly Enemy.” She nudged Skira with her foot. “Only a few renegade Honored Matre enclaves such as this remain. We will either assimilate them or grind them to dust.”

  “Honored Matres are not so easily defeated,” Skira insisted.

  Murbella looked down her nose at the woman on the ground. “You were.” She focused on Corysta. “You are a Reverend Mother?”

  “I am, but I was exiled here for the crime of love.”

  “Love!” The wiry Skira spit the word out, as if expecting agreement from her conqueror. She began to talk about Corysta in a derisive, hard-edged voice, calling her a baby stealer and a criminal to both the Bene Gesserits and the Honored Matres.

  Murbella gave the Sister a quick, appraising glance. “Is that true? Are you a notorious stealer of babies?”

  Corysta kept her eyes averted. “I could not steal what was already mine. No, I was the victim of theft. I nurtured both children out of love, when no one else would.”

  Murbella made up her mind on the spot, knowing she had to learn quickly. “In the interests of speed and efficiency, I will Share with you.” That way, she could gather all the information from Corysta in an instant.

  The other woman hesitated only for a moment, then bowed her head and leaned forward so that Murbella could touch her, brow to brow, mind to mind. In a flood, the Mother Commander drew in everything she needed to know about Buzzell and far more than she had wanted to learn about Corysta.