From the bridge, he watched the bright downward trails arrowing toward the palace district on the west side of Zimia. Down there, Emperor Roderick and his advisers must be staring aghast at what was coming their way.
Josef addressed his ships. “Tighten the noose. Activate weapons and shields, and be ready to fire on my command.”
From his ship, Draigo said, “The Imperial ships cannot outgun us, sir, but if we let them form tight ranks, they might force us to cause more destruction than would be wise. I would prefer not to massacre them.”
“Agreed. Move out. Disperse and neutralize those fighting ships.”
From inside her tank, Norma spoke, “I do not believe Roderick will concede so easily.”
“I do not need prescience to agree with you, Grandmother, but we can hope for the sake of the Imperium that he does.” He realized he was being optimistic, perhaps even naïve. Roderick Corrino’s pride would not let him surrender to the man who had killed his brother. What would it take to get him to abandon that useless vendetta? Josef would have made concessions, within reason.
The Salusan communication channels were in an uproar, and the orbiting Imperial warships scrambled to form a barricade against all the ominous VenHold ships. But Josef’s well-coordinated fleet plunged in, ignoring all the commercial and diplomatic vessels that escaped into interplanetary space; rather, they targeted only the Imperial military ships and scattered them in tactical confusion. Josef had warned each of his captains to exercise restraint, to fire only for defensive purposes, and then just enough to paralyze specific threats.
The VenHold ships succeeded with very little weapons fire. Some of the Imperial defenders blasted at them, but their weapons could not penetrate VenHold shields. Two Imperial vessels engaged in suicide runs, opening fire and trying to ram one of Josef’s ships, but the Navigator aboard easily dodged out of range of the blasts.
In her tank, Norma flinched.
“Hold positions,” Josef transmitted to his fleet. “Roderick must already see he has been defeated.”
Telemetry recorded when Ptolemy, Noffe, and the Navigator cymeks landed on the outskirts of Zimia. Moments later, images broadcast from the emerging walkers showed multiple views of the streets. The enormous warrior forms towered above the ornate governmental buildings.
From his bridge, Josef stared at the planet below, the sea of clouds, the oceans, continents, and sprawling cities. Zimia was the Imperial capital city, and Salusa Secundus had been the heart of the League of Nobles during the centuries of the Jihad. He had been here many times on business. Now he needed to take care of a different sort of business.
Josef had to ensure he could hold his victory here long enough to restore order across the Imperium, to get commerce back to normal. He wanted to put an end to this nonsense, but first Roderick had to back down. With a single word and a gesture, the Emperor could lift Josef’s banishment, restore the VenHold banks, and return everything to normal.
It was time for him to do so.
Josef faced the screen and activated the comm, then spoke his thunderous words like a conquering general. “Roderick Corrino,” he said, intentionally choosing not to include the title of Emperor, “I am a loyal citizen of the Imperium, focused on the future of human civilization. I only wish to conduct my business under a mutually beneficial arrangement with you, but your actions have made that impossible. When you stole my financial assets, you destroyed the peace and prosperity of the Imperium.
“Your brother Salvador caused incalculable harm to us all, and it was my hope that you would be a better leader. I gave you every chance to work with me, to prove yourself, but my optimism has been dashed. Today, I come to end this. I will present my terms for your surrender.”
An Emperor rules through wealth, military might, alliances, and influence. But he keeps his rule through the wisdom of his decisions, the respect of his subjects, and the momentum of history. Should he lose any one of those factors, his position is greatly weakened.
—EMPEROR JULES CORRINO, seventh address to the Landsraad League
When Venport’s Navigator-guided ships crowded space over Salusa Secundus, Roderick rushed to the Palace’s satellite command center. The gall of the man!
The Emperor had already stationed the bulk of his fleet around the planet, but his once-titanic military was tissue thin now that he was missing General Roon’s strike force as well as Admiral Harte’s battle group, which Venport held hostage at Kolhar, not to mention the peacekeeping force he had recently lost at Arrakis.
Even so, he had never expected Josef Venport to make such a bold and irrevocable move. To attack the Emperor directly! Venport was a manipulator, not a conqueror—did he actually want the throne for himself? It did not seem conceivable, but such an enormous, threatening force was not merely for show.
Roderick’s military advisers and Salusan Defense Council officers filled the command center, scanning and collating data to assess the unexpected threat. The Emperor didn’t need to hear their reports, though; when he saw their stricken expressions, he realized how bad the situation was.
“The attackers are perfectly coordinated, Sire,” said Shaad Aliki, his home defense commander. “Those VenHold ships appeared exactly on target, in high orbit, dropping down to wreak havoc among our commercial, diplomatic, and military ships. With such precision, they operate like a force of thinking-machine vessels.”
“Not thinking machines.” Roderick watched the enemy vessels position themselves among his orbiting guardian ships and render them impotent. “Venport’s Navigators guide his ships with a level of accuracy and safety we cannot match.” As he watched the invaders’ vise-grip tighten, he was sickened. “He has declared war on the Imperium! He’s got to know he can’t win against the allied noble houses. The Landsraad League will all turn against him and stand by me.”
Or would they?
A chill went through him. Roderick’s feud with Venport had disrupted commerce throughout the Imperium, and the bottleneck had also cut off regular supplies of spice, now that Arrakis was in turmoil. Many of his nobles were addicted to melange … and he suspected they would rather do without their Emperor than without spice.
Roderick had held the throne for only the past two months, and Salvador’s reign had been an embarrassment of corruption and incompetence. Why would anyone be loyal to the Corrinos? Since the end of the Jihad and the formation of the Imperium, there had been only two Emperors before them—Jules and Faykan—and the Corrino dynasty was barely a paragraph in human history. Yes, it could be overthrown. Governments and dynasties did not exist forever.
Roderick’s throat went dry. It was indeed possible that Josef Venport could usurp the throne and form a new Venport line of rulers. With the great force he had brought to bear, the Directeur had the power to do exactly that … if it was what he wanted.
As if reading his mind, Haditha rushed into the command center and said, “Directeur Venport has many connections in the Landsraad League, he has a military force that is clearly superior to ours, and he’s the one who can guarantee trade across the Imperium. That is what the people want above all else.” She lowered her voice. “I fear that he can break you, my love.”
“He’s a coward,” Roderick muttered. “He murdered my brother and fled justice. I have to keep standing up to him. Such a man can’t be allowed to do business as if nothing happened.”
“He won’t take the throne from you, Sire. That will never happen!” Shaad Aliki cried. “God is on our side.”
“Maybe so,” Roderick said, “but right now I would rather have more warships on our side.” He studied the numerous images being transmitted by his outnumbered orbiting defenders. The VenHold fleet was enormous.
“You know why he took such extreme action,” Haditha said. “It all stems from your brother. Salvador provoked Venport’s original overreaction when he grabbed control of the spice operations on Arrakis.”
“Possibly his most unwise decision,” Roderick grumbl
ed under his breath. Among many.
Haditha continued, “And now we have pushed Venport into another corner by seizing his assets. His response is predictable. We escalated the crisis and forced him to take extreme action.”
“But is this just a threatening growl? I am the Emperor—does he really mean to destroy political stability throughout the Imperium?”
Inside the command center, tacticians displayed images from orbit, as Roderick’s embattled captains inundated the Palace with panicked requests for instructions and reinforcements. “VenHold ships outnumber ours three to one, Sire, and their weapons are superior.”
“As is their coordination,” said Aliki, wearing a deep frown.
Roderick felt helpless anger and dismay. “We have to resist them, fight in every way possible. We are in the right!” His heart felt cold, and he was unable to find a way that his defiance would be anything more than empty words. Would the people fight for him, or would they pledge their allegiance to a new Emperor Venport?
When the VenHold invaders launched orbital drop-pods, several Imperial warships tried to intercept them, but the siege vessels opened fire and neutralized the Imperial fighters, targeting engines only and removing those ships from play so that the drop-pods could continue their descent.
“The VenHold ships do not seem intent on destroying our fleet or killing our soldiers.” Aliki sounded puzzled. “They have exercised obvious restraint. They are just preventing us from interfering with whatever they’re doing.”
Roderick drew little hope from that observation. As the drop-pods streaked down through the atmosphere, evacuation alarms sounded across Zimia. One of the Imperial guards stepped up, his face grim. “Sire, we have to move you to a safe place—the emergency command center. Our shielded underground chambers should be proof against any attack.”
Roderick straightened as the drop-pods continued to hurtle down. Big pods. “Take Haditha and our children first. I shall remain at my post. I can lead better from here.”
Commander Aliki put a firm hand on his arm. “You can’t lead if you’re vaporized, Sire. They could have brought atomics, and we don’t have the planetary shields in place to withstand such a bombardment.”
Haditha sounded more outraged than afraid. “Atomics are forbidden!”
“Treason against the Emperor is also forbidden,” Roderick pointed out to her. “I wouldn’t look to Venport to follow every rule.”
Once the drop-pods crashed around the outskirts of the Imperial capital, they disgorged armored walkers taller than most buildings. Cymeks! Roderick felt nauseated.
With utmost urgency, guards escorted him and Haditha to the secure underground chambers, where Roderick stared in dismay at displayed images of the enormous articulated machines.
Cymeks had not struck Zimia in more than a century. Back during the Jihad they had been deflected by powerful high-energy shields in the Salusan atmosphere, but after the annihilation of the thinking machines and the rebuilding of civilization, the enormous expense of maintaining the shields against cymeks had been deemed unnecessary. Machines posed no further threat to the human race.
But now more than thirty giant warrior forms emerged from the drop-pods and advanced toward the capital city. Ground troops mobilized, along with artillery to defend against the cymeks, but the machines easily brushed off the attack. They looked capable of leveling Zimia if they wished.
For now, however, the cymeks stopped outside the city and simply loomed there, threatening.
Then Josef Venport finally transmitted his ultimatum.
Honor is the backbone of the Freemen of the desert, and our tribes are bound by unbreakable trust and respect. The honor we show to offworlders, however, is entirely different.
—MODOC, Naib of his sietch
The caves of his tribe’s new sietch were spacious and secure. Modoc was surprised that no other Freemen had discovered them, and they were made habitable in short order. His people resented being forced to move from their ancestral home, where generations had lived in harmony with the desert, but he thought they took offense too easily. The new sietch they had constructed was basically the same as the old one, in Modoc’s opinion, and the huge fees they collected from Josef Venport would grant his people many more luxuries.
His father, Naib Rurik, had been a bitter and unimaginative man, shunning improvements to his tribe’s standard of living. He had spurned outside offers of food, medicine, and equipment. Modoc had laughed when his weakling brother Taref talked about the wonders of the Imperium, but that had been primarily to curry favor with their father. At the time, the Naib’s own horizons had extended no farther than the walls of the caves and the surrounding desert, and he was not impressed by his son’s talk.
Taref had been cast out after allying with Josef Venport, but maybe there was something worthwhile in what his brother had babbled about after all. Yes, the desert people could claw out a rough existence by hoarding every last drop of moisture and extracting melange dust from the sands, but did life need to be so harsh and primitive? If offworlders offered modern luxuries, what sort of leader would force his people to keep suffering simply out of his own stubbornness? When water was offered, would a thirsty man rather drink pride?
So, although his people had been inconvenienced by having to abandon their sietch and build another one, their cisterns were now full of water purchased from the garden tanks in Arrakis City; their larders were stocked with packaged honey, preserved food, offworld meats, dried fruits, delicacies they had never before tasted—all because of the generous payment Venport had given them.
And now, Emperor Roderick was paying them even more to bring about Venport’s downfall! Modoc had accepted that mission as well. He saw no problem with his duplicity. This obscure offworlder conflict was not his war, nor was it any of his concern. He would profit from it and laugh at both sides.
Now, as his tribe members made their move on the spice bank, they were well armed with new weapons—purchased, ironically, with Venport’s own money. And they had enough explosives to complete their plan.
To be sure, their old sietch would not be an easy target, and the Directeur placed an extraordinarily high value on his stockpile. With the spice harvested by his crews, as well as what Venport’s raiders took from Imperial holding warehouses and black-market traders, Modoc estimated that more than a year’s worth of spice production was already stored in his tribe’s old caves.
But VenHold’s mercenary defense forces and advanced technology only made the place seem impregnable. The Directeur had obtained the best security systems and weaponry available in the Imperium. But in order to load the new spice bank swiftly, his foolish engineers had widened mountain passageways and defiles that had originally restricted access so that only a few Freemen could pass through at a time. Now, the ways into the sietch were broad thoroughfares.
Obvious vulnerabilities.
Modoc doubted if his raiders would have any trouble completing the mission. They were skilled warriors, and the Naib had inflamed their anger toward Venport by exaggerating any slight the business tycoon had committed against them. His people would fight for an enormous payoff, which they had already received from the Emperor, but also to punish the man who had taken over their sietch and driven them from their ancestral home.…
At midmorning, Modoc led his hundreds of handpicked commandos out onto the sands, knowing how long it would take them to cross the desert. He planned to arrive at dusk.
Secure in their stillsuits against heat and moisture loss, his spotters took up positions while experienced worm callers arranged themselves on the high dunes before pounding resonant spikes into the sands, hammering out a rhythmic, irresistible beat to summon the great sandworms.
All of his people had ridden the behemoths before, and each warrior was adept at mounting and guiding each manifestation of Shai-Hulud. The Freemen believed Shai-Hulud watched over their tribes and cared nothing for the invaders who now infested Arrakis like dune lice.
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Their beliefs were reaffirmed when sandworms responded to the thumping call. Ripples across the open dunes indicated where the monsters traveled beneath. Spotters on the highest dune crests shaded their eyes in the midmorning sun and pointed at the approaching wormsign. The drummers continued pounding on the spikes, causing more worms to come.
Shai-Hulud was on their side.
When the first worm surfaced in an explosive spray of sand and spice, the Freemen had already surrounded the area. As Naib, Modoc was allowing the more ambitious warriors to do the difficult work. After all, he had created this opportunity that offered such great rewards.
When the first sandworm arose, desert fighters scrambled up its side with maker hooks, and inserted spreading wedges between the ring segments to separate them and expose sensitive flesh beneath. In this way they kept the worm from plunging back into the sands. As the giant creature rolled to avoid pain to its sensitive areas, the warriors added ropes and kept scaling the hard-crusted body, imposing their will on the much larger creature. When twenty fighters had climbed to its crest, they shifted their maker hooks down the curvature of the sandworm’s body, forcing it to turn in the direction they wanted. The worm opened its enormous mouth to show a cave filled with sharp crystalline teeth. They drove the creature out onto the sands, heading toward their old sietch.
When the second worm came, Modoc mounted with the next group of fighters.
In all, seven of the beasts surged along, coiled for violence but kept under control by their Freemen riders. The normally territorial creatures did not like being in close proximity to other worms, but Modoc could use their instinctive anger in a different way. The worms would lash out against any target the desert warriors designated—and Modoc planned to give them that target.
The sandworms arrived at the old sietch at sunset, when the shadows were long and Venport’s spice bank was preparing to lock down for the night. Though the sunlight was low and blinding near the horizon, the enormous worms could not be hidden as they stormed out across the desert. This would be an open attack, a full onslaught.
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