Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  Rabban would declare it a victory.

  “Now!” Gurney yelled, releasing his control over the water tanker. The escape pod released, bursting out into the winds and flying to a dangerously low altitude. The clunky vessel had minimal guidance, but he hoped the Harkonnen pursuit ’thopters racing up from the industrial military city below would be more interested in saving the tanker and its valuable cargo.

  Gurney controlled the pod as best he could, sending out a coded signal to Staban Tuek, asking the smugglers to intercept them wherever they crashed out in the desert. He prayed he could guide the pod close enough to the rocks to avoid being devoured by a sand-dwelling worm before they could be saved. The five surviving men with him were injured, and needed medical attention.

  He sat hunched over his knees. The makeup covering his inkvine scar had flaked away under beads of perspiration. He thought of his sister raped and murdered by Beast Rabban, thought of Duke Leto, and dear Master Paul.

  He had done this for them, and would remember that when he counted his loyal dead.

  VI

  In the smugglers’ sietch hidden in the deep desert, the mood was a stew of somberness mixed with anger.

  As the Harkonnen air defenses swooped in to intercept and escort the battered tanker, Gurney’s escape pod tumbled off into the desert. Well away from the tanker, smuggler ships retrieved Gurney’s pod just in time by darting into the canyons and hiding in the rock shadows as a ruthless desert storm built in the atmosphere. The Harkonnens had found the crashed escape pod, but none of the smugglers, and then the storm had driven them back to Carthag.

  In the tunnels, Staban Tuek’s glare was like a fusillade of weapons fire directed at Gurney. But Gurney held on to hope as if it were a lifeline. The dead had been counted after the raid, and the smugglers were dismayed at the loss of thirteen fighters, their bodies left behind in the clutches of the Harkonnen animals. Gurney was sickened by that. Of the twelve, nine loyal Atreides men had been slain and four of the original smugglers, but they’d known full well what they were fighting for; none of them would have any regrets.

  He felt sadness for Orbo, even though the man had been surly and smashed Gurney’s baliset, stealing music from the smuggler hideout just as smugglers stole spice from the Harkonnens. In his life, Gurney had held numerous grudges, but this was not one of them. He understood Orbo, and appreciated him now for his courage. The big man had fought Harkonnens, and he’d exacted his own vengeance.

  Gurney only wished he could have seen the rest of the plan…

  “I shall write a song for them,” Gurney said aloud, lost in his thoughts. “One verse for Orbo and his men, and another for the Duke’s brave men. All will be remembered.”

  Staban’s face reddened, his eyes narrowed. The smuggler leader lurched out of his alcove-cave office. “Remembered, Gurney Halleck? Not a one among us would forget! The raid was a failure. The Harkonnens fought better than expected.” He came forward and thrust a finger in front of Gurney’s face. “What I did not expect was for you to be such a coward.”

  “We were outnumbered and getting killed,” Gurney said. “We couldn’t have survived, and it took skill and courage to bring the survivors home.”

  “You should have fought harder, should have fought longer. We lost good men, some of my best. Thanks to you and your foolish plan, we spent half a year of profits on the spice bribe for Count Fenring and the Guild…” He drew a deep breath, as if he could barely phrase his own disgust. “And you lost the water! Everything! I never believed you would give up so easily. The great Gurney Halleck. I thought all your fury and passion were wrapped up in this scheme. You retreated too soon. I’ve heard the reports on you.”

  Gurney thought of the battle, of the armed Harkonnen guards on the piloting deck. “No man among us is ashamed at how he fought. We killed many. Man for man, their losses were twice ours.”

  “But our losses count more,” Staban said. “Now I have to find more men to replace the ones we lost.” The smuggler leader sounded exhausted. He shook his head as he reiterated, “And you lost all the water.”

  Gurney’s anger boiled. He had held it inside for too long, not just about how the raid ended, but the long-simmering poison of everything that had gone wrong, the treachery since the moment that fighting first broke out on the terrible night in Arrakeen a year ago.

  “I didn’t want the water,” he confessed in a husky voice. “I wanted revenge. I wanted Kanly.”

  He departed, leaving Staban looking confused. Back in the escape pod he found the uniform from the last Harkonnen guard he had killed; it lay folded and cleaned as he had instructed, the knife tear in the belly repaired. He shook out the fabric, inspected it. Now he had everything he needed.

  He had to get back to Carthag—and he had to hurry.

  VII

  The uniform fit well enough, though he despised the markings and the fact that others might look at him and consider him a Harkonnen. But the disguise was necessary. Thanks to the repressive mood that Rabban engendered among his loyal troops as well as the downtrodden people who worked the new garrison city, few people would ask questions. Gurney would use their own suspicions and fears against them. He would use Rabban against himself.

  Carthag was on high alert after the attempted hijacking of the water tanker. The fact that some of the men had called out the name of House Atreides during the raid had set the Harkonnens on even more of an edge, but because the Harkonnens had won, defeating the raiders, they were giddy. Rabban had declared a day of celebration.

  The water tanker had been brought in under heavy guard, and Rabban made bold announcements about how the smugglers had been thwarted, the last remnants of Atreides fighters shamefully defeated. He had mutilated the bodies of the fallen smugglers, including Gurney’s men, for a macabre public spectacle. And when the people of Carthag did not cheer sufficiently, he gave orders for them to do so—and they obeyed.

  The increased security bound the Harkonnen troops more tightly together in their crackdown on the city people in Carthag, and they never thought to look carefully at one another. Gurney had spent many horrible years on Giedi Prime under the Harkonnen boot heel, and he could speak convincingly to the troops, so that they easily accepted him. The Harkonnen blind spots were evident to him.

  Gurney adjusted his uniform, but had removed the insignia of the tanker ship so that no one would ask questions. He couldn’t stomach the other soldiers congratulating him, and none of the surviving tanker crew members were visible, even on this day of celebration.

  Yes, Rabban had declared victory and publicly acknowledged the surviving crew members for their bravery in driving off the attempt. But Gurney had made quiet inquiries and was not surprised to learn that Rabban had quietly killed them, imposing punishment because they had allowed the dire situation to occur in the first place.

  Gurney had known Rabban would never remain quiet about the victory, about the Atreides loyalists who had been defeated. It pleased him to hear a rumor that the escape pod had crashed and all the remaining smugglers had been killed. It didn’t matter how many of the people of Carthag actually believed it. Gurney was perfectly content to let Rabban think that any renegades involved were dead.

  Gurney savored the anticipation as he walked confidently into the barracks, acknowledging the troops who bothered to look at him. He moved as if he had important orders from Rabban himself, and no one would challenge him. A desert hood covered his hair and the side of his face, and his stolen uniform was dust stained, some of the markings strategically obscured.

  Now that the tanker was safely arrived, Rabban wanted to demonstrate largess, to show his appreciation for his troops who had been assigned to this blasted awful planet. In the main barracks assembly hall, he had gathered his men for the event. Gurney had to see this with his own eyes. Someone had to witness his revenge, in the name of his beloved Duke Leto Atreides and all of his men who had died at the hands of the Harkonnens.

  Gurney slipped fr
om one point to another as if he had a destination, but he just wanted to keep moving, keep watching. The soldiers talked in a low buzz as they sat looking down at their trays of food. Most of the men had removed their nose plugs and face masks inside the barracks, but they still wore their desert gear. At a glance he could tell which of these soldiers had been on Arrakis for the past year and which were new arrivals.

  Gurney wanted to see them all dead. They were all Harkonnens. Even the freshest arrivals were not innocent.

  Rabban’s very existence was like abrasive powder in Gurney’s arteries, making the center of his chest hurt. The husky man sat at a table raised above the troops so he could look out upon the lines of tables. Rabban had a feast set before him, far more extravagant than the rations of his troops—but the new governor of Arrakis had his own point to make. He did not stand as he raised a crystal goblet in his left hand. “We have water, and on Arrakis water is life. Our tanker arrived safely, but it was a very close thing, a near disaster. This planet is dangerous, and there are those who wish to harm our rule.”

  With his other hand he picked up a pitcher of water and poured it into the crystal goblet. “Those who tried to steal that tanker would steal our lives, but we stopped them.” He slammed the goblet down onto the tabletop, breaking the crystal and spilling water… a stupid, wasteful thing to do on Arrakis. “We stopped them!” The men cheered. “This water is from the tanker we saved. Extra rations for you on this meal, so you know your worth to House Harkonnen.”

  Servants rushed in carrying pitchers, and the soldiers muttered, but this time the buzz seemed less dour, more curious than appreciative. “One cup apiece from the newly arrived supplies. Those of you who have been with us know the very high value of the reward I give you, the supreme value of water on Arrakis.”

  The soldiers grunted and cheered, and Rabban held up his crystal goblet, waiting as the servants went through the room pouring water. Someone put another goblet on the table next to Rabban, but he put a hand over the top, and shook his head. The servant looked astonished. “But, sir, it’s… you don’t want any water?” Rabban again refused, and the servant surreptitiously poured a goblet for himself and gulped it down.

  Into his own goblet Rabban poured a pale vintage from a green bottle. “I will celebrate with my own reward. Caladan wine. Drink up!” He drank deeply from the goblet, while the others consumed their water.

  Gurney hadn’t expected this, but he didn’t show any emotion, and kept moving by the table as if he had a seat to claim or a place to go. He stood off to one side, watching them all. Waiting.

  Over the next hour Rabban consumed two bottles of Caladan wine and demanded that the servants open a third. He got sloppy drunk, and Gurney grew impatient, nervous. Why wasn’t he drinking any of the water?

  It took nearly ninety minutes for the neurotoxin in the water to take effect on the others. Gurney had known it would take this long, but still felt time dilating, dragging out. He feared his presence would be discovered, and knew he needed to leave. Some of the people were noticing him, remarking on how he stood aside and was not drinking the water, not celebrating with them.

  Now Rabban noticed him from his high table. His wine-bleared gaze locked onto Gurney’s angry glare and seemed to see something there, to recognize an ancient memory of pain. Did Rabban even remember what he had done to Gurney’s sister so long ago, the rape and murder? And what he had done to Gurney, the scarring with a whip? The inkvine scar burned on his cheek and he was sure the makeup was sloughing off. Rabban hesitated.

  Suddenly, one of the soldiers groaned loudly and slumped to the table. Others twisted and spasmed, sliding off their benches onto the dusty stone floor. One after another. The Harkonnen troops inside the barracks were beset with paroxysms of pain, vomiting, twitching with their eyes rolled back in their heads. As alarms sounded, medics rushed in, but there was nothing they could do. They had all drunk the water from the tanker that Gurney had poisoned, and he knew there was no antidote. Those with a smaller body mass were affected first, while the heavier ones could only watch in horror, terrified of what was to come within the next few minutes… and it always came.

  Rabban roused himself enough to bellow for his guards to find the perpetrator, but his protectors, too, were debilitated. Gurney watched them die, one by one and in clusters of screaming pain. By the end of the night, hundreds of Harkonnen troops lay dead, all poisoned from the deadly nerve toxin he had poured through the sample access hatch into the tanker’s cargo hold during the supposed Guild inspection. Only one taste of a droplet was a fatal dose, and Gurney had added more than a liter to the supply… enough to kill every man, woman and child in Carthag.

  But Beast Rabban would not share the water with civilians, with servants, with merchants or tradesmen. He had only given it to his troops, and they were the ones condemned for death.

  “Kanly?” he said in a quizzical tone as his men died around him.

  Gurney slipped out of the barracks before anyone could ask the wrong questions. He remembered how the Harkonnens had conquered Arrakeen, not just because he remembered how the Harkonnens had conquered Arrakeen, not just because they’d enlisted a traitor, or because they’d been in possession of superior weapons, but also because they used archaic and unorthodox weapons, a method of attack that even Thufir Hawat had not anticipated. For the sneak attack on House Atreides, their archenemies had brought in artillery, old-fashioned projectile weapons that were normally useless due to the prevalence of shields. Many Atreides soldiers had died that night in Arrakeen and in the defensive battery caves in the Shield Wall, bombarded by artillery projectiles.

  Duke Leto had said in despair, “Their simple minds came up with a simple trick. We didn’t count on simple tricks.”

  Now Gurney had come up with a simple retaliation of his own.

  Staban Tuek, Count Fenring, and the Guild representatives had all believed that Gurney’s true goal was to steal the water tanker—and that would have achieved a certain measure of revenge. The loss of that water would have placed great hardship on the Arrakis garrison and caused extreme embarrassment for Rabban.

  But for Gurney, stealing the tanker—or attempting to do so—was merely a diversion. He had never intended to escape with the water because he had poisoned it while aboard the tanker. Because they’d fought so hard and lost men, the Harkonnens would never doubt that the raid was sincere. They simply had not had the imagination to figure out what Gurney had really been doing.

  And he had known from Rabban’s past behavior that he would probably attempt to buy the loyalty of his troops with a few sips of water, without knowing it was deadly poison.

  All those deaths… Rabban would cover it up. He would make excuses to his domineering uncle, and the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen would certainly not believe them.

  Gurney heaved a deep, satisfied breath, and felt a shudder—not of relief or satisfaction, but of acceptance. He had achieved Kanly. If only Rabban himself had imbibed the poison water, his revenge would have been sweeter, but this would do for now. For Duke Leto. For young Master Paul. It was not enough, but Gurney Halleck had sent a powerful message.

  Still wearing his Harkonnen disguise, Gurney slipped out of the Carthag barracks, leaving behind the moans of the dying, along with the alarms and shouting medics. Gurney struggled to conceal the satisfied smile on his face. After this massacre, he would leave Carthag and return to the smugglers.

  But he couldn’t depart from the city just yet. He wanted to go into the town, find a merchant and spend some of the money he had brought with him. He needed to buy a new baliset, one that made sweet music to keep the smugglers company in their hideout.

  Now Gurney had a new song to compose.

  From William C. Dietz comes an entry in his popular Legion of the Damned series, featuring societal misfits and outcasts transformed into more-than-human warriors. These unlikely heroes turn out to be the last best hope for human salvation. This story takes place after volume nine of
the original Legion series, A Fighting Chance, giving us a moving story wherein a soldier makes sacrifices to aid and save a girl in need, acting as…

  THE GOOD SHEPHERD

  WILLIAM C. DIETZ

  I am the good shepherd. The good

  shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

  John 10:11

  THE PLANET SAA-NA, THE CONFEDERACY OF SENTIENT BEINGS

  Tara was a Class III “drop city,” meaning a prefab community which could be dropped into a wide variety of planetary environments and brought online in ninety standard days. And that was the kind of efficiency a company like Madsen Mining required to keep costs low and profits high.

  But just because drop cities made financial sense didn’t mean they were pretty to look at. And Tara wasn’t. “Form should follow function.” That was one of the many guiding principles Madsen Mining administrators were expected to follow. And that explained why the plex looked like a stack of randomly placed blocks sitting on top of a “scalped” hill. An antenna farm had replaced the feather trees and the globular water tank sat next to a cluster of three landing pads.

  And that’s where Corporal Mike Murphy stood as a yellow dwarf called Pylo II did its best to melt the fused dirt under the Trooper 5’s blocky feet. But, because Murphy was equipped to handle just about anything, the cyborg barely noticed.

  The other legionnaires weren’t so fortunate. They were bio bods, meaning flesh and blood human beings, who were sweating into their shimmery light-bending camos. Did Murphy feel sorry for them? Hell, no. Because they could eat food, drink beer, and have sex. Not virtual sex… Real sex. Something that Murphy and his electro-mechanical comrades were no longer capable of. Murphy’s thoughts were interrupted when Sergeant Omar spoke. “Atten-hut!”

  The six legionnaires came to attention as a door opened and a teenaged girl appeared. Did she rate such a courtesy? No, but Governor Reginald Smith did, even though her father was nowhere to be seen. Why was that? Murphy wondered. Supposedly, according to what Sergeant Omar had been told, the governor was taking his daughter to school in Ubba. A Class II drop city located 500 standard miles to the east.