Dune: House Corrino

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Rabban nodded. “We’ll teach those lawless bandits who wields the real power here.”

  The Baron responded in a distracted tone. “Yes, I know.”

  The soldiers lined up in their ceremonial uniforms, lovely muscular men— a sight that never failed to stimulate the Baron. The parade began.

  Every man has the same final destination: death at the end of life’s road. But the path we travel makes all the difference. Some of us have maps and goals. Others are just lost.

  — PRINCE RHOMBUR VERNIUS,

  Ruminations at a Fork in the Road

  Trapped on the stranded Heighliner, Gurney Halleck stared out the frigate porthole at the airless void of the cargo hold. Hundreds of ships hung precariously in their berths, clustered together, some smashed and upended. Aboard those craft, many people must be injured or dead.

  Next to him, still wearing the concealing cloak and cowl, Rhombur studied the Heighliner’s framework, reassembling details from a blueprint in his mind.

  Two hours earlier, another holoprojection of the oddlooking Flight Auditor had appeared inside each ship. “We have, nnnn, no additional information. Please stand by.” Then the images had dissolved.

  The Heighliner held numerous cargo ships and transport frigates, some of which were filled with foodstuffs, medicines, and trading goods, enough to keep the tens of thousands of passengers alive for months. Gurney wondered if they would remain marooned out here until starving people began to attack each other. Already, some passengers were nervously gorging themselves on personal supplies.

  Gurney remained far from despair, though. In his younger days he had survived Harkonnen slave pits and had escaped from Giedi Prime by concealing himself in a shipment of blue obsidian. After that, he could tolerate going astray on a spaceship….

  Abruptly, Rhombur lunged to his feet with his baliset and turned his scarred face toward his companion. “This is driving me mad.” The sinews of the Prince’s neck stood out so that Gurney could make out the polymer connections where human muscles had been grafted onto prosthetic parts. “The Guild is full of administrators, bureaucrats, and bankers. The support staff on a Heighliner performs only menial duties. None of them has much expertise in these vessels or the Holtzman engines.”

  “What are you getting at?” Gurney looked around. “How can I help?”

  Rhombur’s gaze took on the rigid, expectant stare of a leader, eerily similar to the countenance of Dominic Vernius, which Gurney remembered so well. “I have spent my life like the passengers on this Guild ship, waiting for someone else to solve my problems, expecting the situation to fix itself. And I won’t do it any longer. I must try, no matter the result.”

  “We have to keep our identities secret in order to complete our mission.”

  “Yes, but we can’t help Ix unless we can get there.” Rhombur went to the nearest observation porthole, staring out at the other ships trapped there. “I’m willing to wager that I know more about the intricacies of this ship than any other person aboard. Emergency situations call for strong leadership, and the Spacing Guild doesn’t staff its regular passenger vessels with strong leaders.”

  Gurney placed their balisets in a storage locker, but did not bother to lock it. “Then I am at your side. I’ve sworn to protect you and assist you in any way.”

  Rhombur looked out a large window at the convoluted catwalks and structural girders that formed the giant ship’s framework. His gaze acquired an unfocused quality, as if he were trying to recall subtle details. “Come with me. I know the way to the Navigator’s chamber.”

  * * *

  With many of his ingrained memories recovered after the tragedy of his accident, Rhombur recalled a plethora of access codes and the locations of unmarked hatches that laced the Heighliner’s inner hull decks like boreholes in wormwood. Though the programming had been installed decades ago during the construction of the vessel, Dominic Vernius had always left secret access points for his family as a routine precaution.

  Guild security men were doing their best to keep passengers aboard their individual ships, while allowing a limited number of people to wander into the gallerias and assembly areas within the hull decks. But in the midst of turmoil and frightened passengers, security could not watch every path.

  Rhombur’s cyborg legs did not tire, and Gurney followed with his rolling gait. The cowled Prince marched along a damaged but still-serviceable catwalk. Even making use of lift platforms and caged-in conveyors, it took the pair hours to reach the upper high-security decks.

  When he activated a hatch and stepped into a garishly lit chamber, Rhombur startled seven Guild representatives in the midst of an urgent conference around a heavy table. The Guildsmen sat up, their normally dull eyes flashing silver. Most of them looked subtly altered from the human norm. One man had puffy ears and a narrow face, another had tiny hands and eyes, and yet another had stiff limbs, as if he lacked knees and elbows. Based upon their distinctive lapel badges, the Ixian Prince identified route administrators, a roly-poly Guild Banker, a legate to CHOAM, an ancient Guild Mentat, and the fish-eyed Flight Auditor who had served as holo-spokesman.

  “How did you get in here?” the roly-poly Banker demanded. “We are in the middle of a crisis. You must return to your—”

  A flurry of guards rushed in, blades drawn. One man carried a stunner.

  Rhombur stepped forward, with Gurney at his side. “I have something important to say… and to do.” Arriving at a crucial decision, he put a hand to the hood that covered his head. “As a nobleman, I invoke the Guild’s code of secrecy.”

  The guards took several steps closer.

  Slowly, Rhombur pulled down his hood to reveal the metal plate on the back of his skull, the lumpy burn marks and poorly healed lacerations on his face. As he opened the robe, the Guildsmen could see his bulky armored arms, his prosthetic legs, the life-support systems woven into his clinging garments.

  “Let me see the Navigator. I may be able to help.”

  The seven Guild representatives around the table looked at each other and spoke in a clipped language, shorthand for thought impulses and words. The Prince strode to the edge of their table. His limbs thrummed with power, and the pumps in his chest drew in breaths, filtered them, and metabolized oxygen, adding chemical energy to the battery packs that powered his artificial organs.

  The elderly Guild Mentat regarded the cyborg intruder, with hardly a glance at Gurney Halleck. Holding up one hand, palm out, the Mentat gestured for the security men to leave. “We require privacy.”

  When they were gone, the aged man said, “You are Prince Rhombur Vernius of Ix. We learned of your presence on this craft, and of the… fee… that you paid to keep it secret.” His rheumy eyes studied the mechanical enhancements of Rhombur’s body.

  “Do not be concerned for your secret,” said the Flight Auditor. He placed his too-short arms on the table. “Your identity is, nnnn, safe with us.”

  Gazing around the table, Rhombur said, “I understand how this Heighliner was constructed. In fact, on its maiden voyage I watched a Navigator guide it through foldspace, to move it from the caverns of Ix.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “But I suspect our predicament has nothing to do with the Holtzmann engines. You would know that as well as I do.”

  Like a lightning thought that skittered around the table, the Guildsmen abruptly sat straighter, putting together the implications of Rhombur’s identity, his disguise, and his destination.

  “Know this, Prince,” the pudgy Banker added, “the Guild would not object to seeing House Vernius restored to Ix. The Bene Tleilax have no vision or efficiency. Heighliner production and quality have fallen off drastically, and we have been forced to reject some ships because of inadequate workmanship. This has harmed our revenues. The Spacing Guild would benefit from your return to power. In fact, the entire Imperium would be well served if you were to—”

  Gurney interrupted. “Nobody said anything about that. We’re just travelers maint
aining a low profile.” He looked sharply at Rhombur. “And, at the moment, this ship isn’t going anywhere.”

  Rhombur nodded. “I need to see the Navigator.”

  * * *

  The chamber was a large, round-walled aquarium sealed with armored glass and filled with the cinnamon-orange fog of melange gas. The mutated Navigator, with webbed hands and atrophied feet, should have floated without gravity inside the chamber. Instead, the creature’s distorted form lay slumped and motionless in the spice fog, its shrunken eyes glassy and unfocused.

  “The Navigator collapsed while folding space,” explained the Flight Auditor. “We don’t know, nnnn, where we are. We cannot rouse him.”

  The Guild Mentat coughed, and said, “Traditional navigation techniques are unable to pinpoint our location. We are far beyond the edge of known space.”

  One of the route administrators shouted into a speaking screen on the wall. “Navigator, respond! Steersman!” The creature twitched on the floor, proving that he was still alive, but no words came from the puckered, fleshy mouth.

  Gurney looked around at the seven Guildsmen. “How are we going to help him? Are there any medical facilities for… these creatures?”

  “Navigators require no medical attention.” The Flight Auditor blinked his wide-set eyes. “Melange gives them life and health. Nnnn. Melange makes them more than human.”

  Gurney rolled his lumpy shoulders. “Melange isn’t doing enough right now. We need this Navigator to recover so we can return to the Imperium.”

  “I want to go inside the chamber,” Rhombur said. “Perhaps I can rouse him. He might be able to tell me what went wrong.”

  The Guildsmen looked at each other. “Impossible.” The plump Banker gestured with a stubby-fingered hand toward the murk of spice. “Such a concentration of melange would be fatal to anyone not adapted to it. You cannot breathe the air.”

  Rhombur placed a prosethetic hand on his own barrel chest, where the cyborg bellows of his mechanical diaphragm caused him to inhale and exhale in a precise rhythm. “I do not have human lungs.”

  The realization made Gurney laugh with astonishment. Even if concentrated melange damaged organic tissues, Dr. Yueh’s artificial metabolizers should protect Rhombur, for a short while at least.

  In the sealed chamber, the Navigator stirred again, on the verge of death. Finally, the odd-looking group of Guildsmen agreed.

  The Flight Auditor evacuated the sealed umbilical corridor behind the Navigator’s tank, knowing that some of the potent gas would leak out when the hatch was opened. Rhombur clasped Gurney’s hand, careful not to squeeze hard enough to break his friend’s bones. “Thank you for your faith in me, Gurney Halleck.” He paused, thinking of Tessia, then turned to the hatch.

  “When this is over, we’ll have to add a few more verses to our epic song.” The troubadour warrior clapped the Ixian on the shoulder, then ducked back into the protected corridor with the Guildsmen, who sealed the entrance.

  Rhombur approached the rear access panel that the bloated form of the Navigator could no longer pass through. Before proceeding, he increased the filtration levels of his cyborg breathing mechanism and decreased his respiration requirements. Drawing upon his body’s power cells, he hoped to function for a time without having to inhale the melange gas.

  He disengaged the lock of the access hatch and broke the seal with a hiss. Then he yanked open the round doorway, crawled inside, and closed it behind him to retain as much of the orange fog as possible. His organic eye stung, and the olfactory receptors, still functional in his nostrils, screamed against the potent reek of acrid aromatic esters.

  The Prince took a tentative step forward, walking with leaden feet, as if immersed in a slow, drug-induced dream. Ahead, through shifting visibility, he spotted the Navigator’s naked, fleshy form— not human anymore, but some sort of atavistic mistake, a creature that had never been meant to reproduce.

  Rhombur bent to touch the soft skin. The Navigator turned his massive head and tiny inset eyes toward him. The shriveled mouth twitched and opened to exhale rusty clouds of gas without a sound. He blinked at Rhombur as if assessing possibilities, sorting through memories and groping for primitive words with which he could communicate.

  “Prince… Rhombur… Vernius.”

  “You know my name?” Rhombur was surprised, but remembered that Navigators possessed prescient powers.

  “D’murr,” the creature said in a long, low whisper. “I was… D’murr Pilru.”

  “D’murr? I knew you as a young man!” None of the Navigator’s features was recognizable.

  “No time… Threat… outside force… evil… drawing closer… beyond the Imperium.”

  “A threat? What kind of threat? Is it coming here?”

  “Ancient enemy… future enemy… cannot remember. Time folds… space folds… memory fails.”

  “Do you know what’s wrong with you?” Rhombur’s words buzzed as he forced them through his enhanced larynx without drawing breaths. “How can we help you?”

  “Tainted… spice gas… in tank,” D’murr struggled to say. “Prescience fails… navigation error. Must escape… return to known space. The enemy has seen us.”

  Rhombur had no idea which enemy he meant, or if the injured D’murr was having delusions. “Tell me what to do. I want to help.”

  “I can… guide. First, spice gas must be… changed. Remove poison. Bring fresh spice.”

  Rhombur stood back, uneasy about the strange, unidentified threat. He didn’t understand what could be wrong with the melange gas, but at least he understood how to fix the problem. He had no time to lose. “I’ll have the Guildsmen exchange the spice in your tank, and you’ll be fine soon. Where is your backup supply?”

  “None.”

  Rhombur felt cold. If the Guild had no spice stockpile aboard the marooned Heighliner, they had no hope of finding melange out here in deep, uncharted space.

  “No… backup supply on board.”

  How long can one man fight alone? Far worse, though, to stop fighting completely.

  — C’TAIR PILRU, PRIVATE JOURNALS (FRAGMENT)

  Seated on an organic sofpad inside her snow shelter, Sister Cristane considered her predicament. A cold blue glowglobe floated just beneath the low ceiling. She wore a hooded orange syndown jacket, clingtrousers, thick boots.

  This was only her first day on the mountain, far from the Heighliner crash site… far from anything at all. As part of her commando training, to stay in top physical and mental condition, she was required to go on regular wilderness hikes, pitting her survival skills against the elements.

  Before dawn, she had begun hiking up the six-thousand-meter Mount Laojin, winding her way along wooded ridges, high meadows, rugged talus slopes, and finally negotiating a rocky glacier. She had brought along a small pack, minimal supplies, and her wits. It was a typical Bene Gesserit test.

  An unexpected weather shift had caught her in a white-out on a boulder-strewn moraine, an open expanse with steep snow-covered cliffs above— ripe for an avalanche. Cristane had hollowed out a snow cave and crawled inside with her gear. She could adjust her metabolism enough to keep herself warm, even here.

  Breathing steam, letting a thin film of perspiration glisten on her skin under the blue glowglobe, she took deep, relaxing breaths. At a double-snap of her fingers, the light went out, immersing her in eerie moon-white darkness. The blizzard roared on outside, a relentless onslaught that scraped against her small enclosure.

  She had been intending to enter a meditational trance, but suddenly the drone of the blizzard grew quieter, and she heard the unexpected vibration of an ornithopter. Within moments, the excited voices of women and the sounds of digging came from outside the shelter.

  The snowdrift broke away, exposing her shelter to the cold wind. Familiar faces peered inside. “Leave your gear here,” one Sister said, looking at Cristane. “Mother Superior needs to see you right away.”

  The young Bene Gesserit emerge
d from the shelter into the ragged end of the blizzard. The rocky peak of Mount Laojin was bedecked with a thick blanket of new snow. A large ornithopter perched on a flat area upslope, and she trudged through soft whiteness toward it.

  Mother Superior Harishka leaned out of the ‘thopter hatch, waving her rail-thin arms. “Hurry, child. We can just get you to the spaceport in time for the next Heighliner.”

  Cristane climbed in, and the two women sat side by side as the aircraft lifted off in a flurry of blown snow. “What is it, Mother Superior?”

  “An important assignment.” With dark almond eyes, the old woman peered at her. “You are being sent to Ix. We have already lost one operative there and now we have received disturbing information from Kaitain. You must learn what you can about the secret operations of the Tleilaxu and the Emperor. They have been scheming together on Ix.”

  Harishka placed a dry, wrinkled hand on the commando’s knee. “Discover the nature of Project Amal, whatever that is.”

  * * *

  Wrapped in a protective trance that reduced her metabolism to near zero, Sister Cristane huddled inside an orbital dump box as it braked through the atmosphere and cruised down to the surface of Ix, accompanied by a parade of sonic booms. Everything had happened very quickly.

  A Bene Gesserit makeup specialist had followed her onto the Heighliner, where she was disguised as a male for her protection, since no one had ever seen a Tleilaxu female. In addition, before she had fallen ominously silent, the Bene Gesserit spy Miral Alechem had reported the disappearance of Ixian women on the Tleilaxu-controlled industrial planet.

  Now, using an electronic device she carried, the young commando guided the plummeting box several kilometers off course. After it skidded across an alpine meadow, finally coming to a halt, she worked her way out, sealed the container behind her, and shouldered her backpack, which contained weapons, food, and warm-weather survival gear.