Princess of dune, p.38
Princess of Dune, page 38
The burly guards were human, but physically altered. As powerfully built as Sardaukar, their skin was mottled and lumpy, obvious genetic alterations to resemble rocks in a chameleonlike defense. The Tleilaxu sentries made no noise, spoke no words—simply drew blades and activated thrumming body shields. Chani saw the shimmering movement of air.
The sentries lunged, powerful and swift. Wearing a broad grin, Jamis blocked their blows with his crysknives. He spun, ducked, and struck at the guards, but his blade slid away from unfamiliar body shields.
As Khouro, Chani, and their companions prepared to defend themselves, four more camouflaged guards emerged from the rock shadows.
The chameleon men fought like machines. Jamis grunted with the effort, and even though he was one of the best Fremen fighters, he was not well practiced in fighting against shields. Finally, he pushed his crysknife through the shimmering field and drove it hard into the kidney of his opponent. The sentry flailed and fought even as he died, and still he made no sound.
Chani faced one of the other opponents, using her best skills to dodge and block, but the enemy shields caused her great consternation. The sentry’s lumpy stone face showed no fury or hatred, simply a bland expression.
She thought of all the times she had practiced knife fighting with Jamis, learning his moves, and dueling with Khouro as well. This guard had a different style, more brute force, but she could defeat him. She darted in like a swift desert mouse. In her left hand, the crysknife slipped through the shield behind his body, and she used its edge to slash the back of his leg, hamstringing him. As the mottled Tleilaxu collapsed, he kept stabbing at her with his other hand. Then she drove the crysknife into his throat.
Khouro fought like his namesake desert whirlwind, but his arm was slashed. In the battle, the stone-colored guards managed to kill one of the commandos, but the rest of the Fremen finished the job, until all the strange sentries lay dead.
As Chani looked solemnly at their fallen comrade, a young man who had been known for his quiet personality, Khouro straightened and addressed the rest of the group. “Take heart—this means we did find the facility that was hidden from the Spacing Guild.”
“It’s time to destroy it,” Adamos said.
“It would be my pleasure,” Jamis added.
They took ten more minutes to breach the door seal, then broke into the warren of the hidden facility. Foul vapors stung Chani’s senses—evil-smelling chemical odors with an undertone of rotting flesh. Deathstills had an odor like this, which Chani disliked intensely.
Brash and ready to destroy whatever they found, the razzia team ran into the tunnels. Khouro led the way, though his wounded arm bled heavily. He ignored the gash, but Chani could see he needed medical attention. He paused only long enough to receive a quick field wrap, then ran on.
The first chamber they encountered was lined with metal and plaz. It contained racks of biological samples, tables with analytical instruments. Two panicked Tleilaxu scientists scurried about, trying to lock up their precious samples. The offworlders were unusual gray-skinned humans, thin and sallow, almost corpse-like. Their body frames were small, their movements fidgety. They shouted at each other in a strange guttural language.
Chani flashed her brother a sharp grin. These Tleilaxu seemed to think the raid was a matter of espionage, that someone wanted to steal their vile research.
“Just kill them!” Khouro shouted as the team began to ransack the room. “The Guild’s orders are to turn this place into rubble.”
Jamis grunted as he pulled one of the sample racks off the wall. It smashed to the floor, scattering slides and plaz containers. Malodorous fumes bubbled up from chemical stations. The Tleilaxu scientists wailed until two Fremen struck them down with crysknives.
“This is just the outer section,” Chani said. “There could be a lot more in this place.” A part of her dreaded finding out.
Two fighters remained behind to continue wrecking the first chamber, but Chani saw more of the complex ahead, presumably more laboratories. She wanted to understand what these evil researchers were doing, why they had so enraged the Guild.
She had seen the Tleilaxu snatch the Navigator’s body. What were they doing with it? How had they made use of the dead cells? Surely to create something abominable.
This laboratory itself might be valuable to the Spacing Guild, but Chani was not obligated to save anything for them. Her father had already transmitted a basic report containing everything he knew. Thanks to Liet’s teachings, she respected science, but her skin crawled with revulsion at what she had already seen in the facility. She didn’t want to understand what these researchers had been doing.
“Here!” Jamis shouted from the main passage.
Chani and Khouro ran out to see two more of the mottled guards in the tunnels, both wearing body shields. They threw themselves on Jamis, but by now, the Fremen were learning to fight against them. With efficient movements and strokes, they killed both camouflaged guards.
With the additional sentries, Chani guessed they were stationed there to protect a particularly sensitive part of the facility.
Stepping over the bodies, the team passed through another sealed entrance into the main Tleilaxu laboratory. There, what they saw was far worse than what they had seen before.
Gray-skinned Tleilaxu rushed about grabbing makeshift weapons, calling for guards to defend them. But Chani stared in disbelief at the grotto, and nausea welled up inside. Yes, this all must be destroyed.
Bubbling fleshy tanks were connected to recirculating apparatus, each one larger than a coffin—translucent biological wombs filled with an orange-tinted liquid. Each tank held a hideous growing lump like a giant fetus with an enlarged head, withered arms and legs, a distorted face, and enormous eyes. They looked unfinished, like figures made of soft wax.
“Abominations!” Jamis lunged toward the nearest womb tank and slashed with his crysknife to cut open the rubbery walls. Three frantic Tleilaxu threw themselves on him, desperate to pull him away, but Jamis stabbed them to death.
More blotched guards marched into the laboratory, ready to fight—and the Fremen were just as ready to kill them. Chani stabbed one of the guards with her worm hook and pushed closer to the nearest womb tank. Sickened, she stared at the twisted and tortured giant embryo that squirmed like a larva in spice-saturated amniotic fluid.
With lips curled back in disgust, she shoved the sharp prod through the wall and speared the undeveloped monstrosity. Melange-rich liquid spewed onto the floor, along with blood. Other Fremen splashed around, butchering Tleilaxu, slaying the chameleon guards, and wrecking the horrific tanks.
In the chaos, Chani realized that the heaviest fighting was concentrated around the far end of the chamber—by another secure door. Anger flared within, and she nodded to Khouro. “There! Something more!”
Smeared with blood and fluids, her brother’s grimace was like a death mask. Together, the two of them defeated another mottled guard, then reached the back chamber. Chani worked the door controls while Khouro defended her from more desperate attacks, despite the wound on his arm.
The last few Tleilaxu wailed, their voices high-pitched and terrified—and that gave Chani all the incentive she needed. She had to see what loathsome secret they were protecting.
When the Fremen broke into the securest inner chamber, Chani was even more aghast. Khouro clutched his stomach, driving back the desire to vomit.
Four more fleshy translucent tanks hung against the wall, considerably larger than the others. The forms they contained were bigger, more developed, more complete. And the creatures’ eyes were open and aware.
Their mouths gaped in constant, wordless screams.
Chani remembered the misshapen corpse the Guild had reverently deposited on top of the brewing spice blow, a mutated and enhanced human. But these were horrifically worse. “They’re growing Navigators here!” she whispered.
She’d heard of the Tleilaxu process of creating gholas, growing new creatures from the cells of dead bodies. Now she saw clearly what the awful offworlders had done with the stolen corpse. The Tleilaxu had made warped genetic clones from the cells of the Guild Navigator—and now they had four ghola Navigators, whose enhanced minds possessed the prescience to see into millions of paths of the future.
In the main laboratory chamber, these enslaved Navigator clones howled in agony from their tank prisons, their appalled voices rumbling through amniotic fluid. Bubbles escaped their screaming mouths. Their emaciated limbs twitched as they tried to break free, but the womb tanks trapped them. Their starry eyes were filled with terrors they could not express.
If these creatures could indeed see into all possible futures, Chani wondered if they had foreseen the Fremen raid, and if they had known of their impending deaths this day, did they welcome them?
Jamis charged into the back chamber, joined by a small group of fighters. Seeing the tanks, he stumbled to a halt and let out a loud Chakobsa curse.
Tleilaxu researchers tried to defend themselves with lab equipment, glass tubes, sharpened probes. Khouro ignored the trivial men as he attacked the nearest womb tank, using his good arm. The freakish Navigator inside looked out at him with a sad, pitiful expression, totally apart from any fear—a creature just wanting its wretched existence to end.
Her brother ripped open the fleshy wall, spilled out the distorted form that twitched even as the foul-smelling fluid poured onto the floor. Khouro stabbed the monstrosity in the back of its head with his crysknife.
Jamis offhandedly killed two frantic Tleilaxu researchers while the other terrified scientists hid behind a metal table, huddled in their loose robes and hiding their hands in their sleeves.
Chani stared at the dying ghola Navigator in front of her. Its huge eyes held the universe and immense misery, as if its prescience revealed only the most appalling paths. She felt a flicker of sympathy, knowing that the creature had not chosen this existence for itself. It had been created from the dead cells of a stolen body.
The Tleilaxu were to blame. This thing was just a victim.
Yet it still had to be destroyed.
Khouro and Jamis felt no such pity. They hacked and smashed open the womb tanks, butchered the remaining three creatures inside. Her brother’s face was a merciless mask.
One of the last Tleilaxu men scuttled from his meager shelter and let out an accusatory shriek. Khouro turned just as the researcher flicked his arms. His loose gray sleeves flopped, revealing dart projectors—a flurry of bright needles sprayed out like a cloud of hornets. The tiny darts peppered Khouro’s face, neck, chest, and arms.
The Tleilaxu man cackled and screamed out in Galach, “Die, vermin!”
“Khouro!” Chani slashed the researcher’s throat so deeply that she nearly beheaded him. She paid no attention as the hated man fell, instead running to her brother.
He looked mystified at the dozens of tiny needles that poked like spines out of his skin. “What is this?” he asked, as if they were little more than gnats.
Then a little flash came from the first one in his chest, and another and another. The needles flared into sparks, and each tiny detonation left a pockmarked crater in his skin. Khouro’s face suddenly became a moonscape of little red wounds, while other needles burrowed deeper into him.
He screamed in agony and terror. Chani grabbed him, eased him onto the floor, but the needles weren’t done. He screamed out that he was burning up in pain, as acid-like poison fed into his bloodstream. More needles tunneled into his chest and exploded inside, one after another. With each tiny spark and explosion, Khouro howled more.
She yelled his name, cradled his head. Jamis bounded over to them, waving his crysknives dripping with blood and fluid. Helpless, he stood beside Chani.
She frantically tried to pluck out any remaining needles she saw, while her brother jerked and twisted in his horrific death throes. Some of the needles held fast-acting toxins that made his skin bloat and blacken, while tiny internal detonations kept shredding his body, piece by piece.
“Khouro, Khouro!” she moaned.
Finally, almost mercifully, two darts in his neck exploded, leaving his throat a gaping wound, and he went limp. Chani wept as she rocked her dead brother, but there was nothing she could do for him.
Shocked and grieving Fremen gathered around. For the moment, she just held on to Khouro and the memories they shared. But as a Fremen, she forged that sorrow into hot iron. She glanced around the horrific laboratory and knew there were more chambers in this complex.
She nodded, remembering the Guild’s specific instructions. Her voice was hoarse. “Destroy it,” she said. “Destroy it all.”
When dealing with an opportunist such as Moko Zenha, it may seem easy to predict his actions, but that could be by design. With such a personality it is easy to be deceived.
—Filmbook lesson commentary
Irulan’s armored shuttle departed the ornate Imperial frigate in orbit and descended toward the palace.
Zenha’s Liberation Fleet escorted the shuttle down with an impressive show of force, no doubt attempting to intimidate her, but Irulan made no comment. She knew the rebel commander would grant her safe passage. He had far too much to lose if he broke the uneasy truce now. Irulan thought she might be able to reach a bargain with him, if she could only figure out how he intended to achieve his aims. It would be a bargain that Zenha ultimately would not like, but perhaps she could fool him.
After the shuttle landed on the pavement outside the palace proper, Wensicia rushed out to greet Irulan. In a flash, Irulan assessed little details of her sister’s appearance and immediately felt relieved. She had imagined that Wensicia might be ready to break under pressure, but instead, the younger princess looked defiant, even confident. She was lovely in a sapphire gown with a ruffled collar and magnificent, sparkling jewels.
They first clasped hands, then embraced. Irulan’s pulse raced. “I’m glad to see you unharmed, sister! When we withdrew to Arrakis, I never expected you would be in such danger here.” She gazed up at the sky, saw ominous enemy battle cruisers hanging there like gigantic armored thunderheads.
Wensicia lifted her chin. “We’re in no danger right now. Those are all for show—”
“I am convinced Zenha does not intend to destroy Kaitain,” Irulan interrupted, “but he is still a threat.” She quickly summarized the Sisterhood intelligence report on the rebel commander’s personality profile.
“That is very interesting, and I agree,” Wensicia said. “But he doesn’t dare begin an attack, because I have found a very big hammer to hold over their heads.” She gave a dismissive gesture toward the threatening ships and chuckled. “I found a way to emasculate them all. With a snap of my fingers, I can destroy every one of Zenha’s warships.” A frown crossed her face like a shadow. “But he could still rain down fire in his last minutes. So, we are at a standoff.”
Irulan’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? What defenses do we have?”
Wensicia took her arm as the Sardaukar escort followed, out of earshot and alert for any threat. “You know I study obscure classified military details. In old records, I found a way to neutralize the Liberation Fleet, a back door into all their control systems. I have Commander-General Zenha wrapped around my finger.”
As they entered the Imperial Palace and walked along the polished hall, tense emptiness echoed around them. Irulan wondered where all the courtiers had gone; perhaps they huddled in hiding somewhere.
“Poor Chalice would love to see you as well,” Wensicia said, then lowered her voice. “I’m afraid she hasn’t been very social since the invasion. She made a poor choice in coming home when she did.”
Irulan blinked. “Chalice returned? But she went to Wallach IX for her own safety!”
“That didn’t last long.” Wensicia clucked her tongue. “She found the Mother School too austere for her tastes. Josifa and Rugi are doing well as acolytes, but when the Bene Gesserit wanted Chalice to participate in rigorous studies, she came running back to the Imperial Court instead. She arrived just in time for the siege. She is tended by the court Suk doctor for outbreaks of hysteria, and is rather heavily medicated.”
Irulan imagined the consternation and terror her flighty sister must feel, but didn’t think she could face Chalice just yet. There was too much at stake. “It is best if you and I talk privately now, Wensicia.”
Her sister nodded, but she seemed energized, not overwhelmed. “I have much to tell you—and I even worked out a way that we could control a formidable opponent like Zenha, but keep him to our advantage. As his actions have proved, he is much more competent than the noble fools who held superior command positions. We shouldn’t waste such a man.”
Irulan frowned as she walked beside Wensicia. “Keep him? The man launched an insurrection and murdered countless noble officers. He’s now attempting to overthrow the Imperial throne!”
Wensicia just gave a satisfied smile. “Even so, we might rein him in and make him useful to us—on a tight leash.”
Wensicia took great pride in explaining how she had proved her mettle by blowing up fifteen of Zenha’s vessels, rendering him almost impotent and backing him into a corner. “So, despite all his bluster, he won’t launch a massive attack on the palace. Empty threats! You and I are perfectly safe here, Irulan. I know he wants a resolution, and I’ve offered him one.” She arched her eyebrows. “He wants peace, he wants a way out … and he wants me.”
Irulan was surprised. “What do you mean he wants you?”
“To marry me, of course, which would bind him to an Imperial princess, and thus to the Golden Lion Throne.” She flashed her lavender eyes, looking both scheming and satisfied. “I suggested that he could resolve the military standoff with a marriage alliance, and he seemed pleased by my suggestion.”
Irulan’s thoughts raced. “So he accepted?”
“Not yet, but he will. What’s to think about? We can arrange a quick ceremony here at the palace to instantly seal the peace. We’d avert this war and remove any threat of further destruction. All neatly wrapped up.” She sniffed. “I intend to hold the ceremony in the next day or two.” Wensicia seemed impatient. “We didn’t expect you to come here. I would have had it all resolved.”
