Mentats of Dune

Chapter 74 (There are far more pleasant places for an Emperor)

The spice crew chief received word from the spotter aircraft. “Wormsign, chief! It’s close — and a big one.”

The Imperial entourage responded with a titter of nervous excitement. Salvador hurried to the dust-smeared observation windows on the control deck. “Good. I’ve been wanting to see one.”

The crew chief kept his attention back on the communication system. “Plot its course. How long do we have?” The spotter transmitted coordinates, and the location of the behemoth appeared on a grid-map of the surrounding dunes. “Gods below, it’s close! Why the hell didn’t you spot it sooner?”

“It must have been running deep, Chief,” the spotter replied.

“You should hire better spotters,” Salvador remarked.

Crew Chief Okarr’s drawn expression and gray complexion alarmed the Emperor. “This one is extremely close, Sire. Too close!”

Wondering what action was necessary, Salvador snapped a signal to his Imperial troops. “Be on high alert. We may need your protection.”

The factory crew chief blinked at him in disbelief. “Sire, your guards can’t do anything against a giant sandworm.”

Directeur Venport’s voice came over the comm speakers, sounding scratchy and distant, even though Salvador thought he had merely gone to an office in another part of the spice factory. “Chief Okarr, prepare to jettison the spice — we don’t have much time.” The Emperor was not impressed with the electrical systems aboard this big mobile factory. Static storms and dust must be playing havoc with the circuitry.

“Yes, Directeur. I summoned the carryalls, and my crew is ready to evacuate. I’m trying to reach the rescue ships right now — they should be inbound momentarily.” His hands a blur across the controls, the chief prepped the spice container and launched it.

The loud explosive report startled Salvador. “What was that? Are we under attack?”

“That was planned, Sire.” Chief Okarr was flushed and tense, but he still answered the Emperor’s questions. “All the spice gathered during our operations is packed into an armored cargo container, which I just jettisoned. In tight situations like this, we launch it with a locator beacon far from the spice factory. With the worm distracted by the greater vibrations from our operations, we can usually retrieve the container later.”

“Interesting,” Salvador said, but his nervous entourage did not seem interested at all.

The captain of the Imperial Guard picked up on the tension in the control room. “Sire, we should return to the Imperial shuttle. It’s time to get to safety.”

Salvador nodded. “Yes, let’s leave these good people to their work. Spice mining is a complicated business, as we’ve seen firsthand. Good job, all of you.”

The guard captain touched his earadio, listened, and recoiled. “Sire, there’s been an explosion on the shuttle! I think it’s sabotage.”

The entourage gasped, looking to Salvador for guidance. He tried to be strong, for their sakes. Mustering a calm voice, he said, “We were warned of the dangers on Arrakis, but we’ll be all right. Captain, arrange for us to get away.”

“Sire! The shuttle can’t fly! The engines are ruined.”

“Ruined? You mean they can’t be repaired?”

“Ruined, Sire! We’re trapped here.”

“Will we still be able to see the worm?” asked one of the baliset players, as if she were more interested in inspiration for a new song than her own safety.

“I’m sure we’ll see the worm from the evacuation ships. Crew Chief, where do we go to board your rescue vessels?”

The chief was short-tempered, barking orders into the comm system. “We don’t have enough escape ships for a hundred extra people!”

“Carryalls aren’t responding, Chief — I can’t raise them at all,” shouted one of the workers. “They’ve got to be inbound.”

Someone else yelled, “That worm will be here in less than five minutes.”

Venport’s voice crackled over the speakers on the control deck. “Emperor Corrino, my apologies, but urgent business has called me away. I would have preferred to tell you in person.” He sounded flippant. “I’ve decided to reject Imperial seizure of my spice operations. Here on Arrakis, power doesn’t come from a title or bloodline, but from actions, resources, and carefully laid plans.”

Salvador didn’t understand what the man was saying.

Venport continued, “Chief Okarr, the spice cargo has been jettisoned safely away. You and your men have served Combined Mercantiles well and generated a great deal of profit for us. It was your bad luck to be assigned here today, but rest assured that I will compensate your families generously for their losses. And Emperor Corrino … enjoy the rest of your tour.”

The chief roared curses into the voice pickup. Imperial soldiers closed around Salvador to protect him, though he didn’t feel any safer having them near. The factory workers were in a complete panic. Some curled up, muttering prayers, while others fled the control deck, but there was no safe place to go.

Outside on the dunes, a handful of ground rollers raced away from the harvester factory. Salvador wondered if he and his inner circle could commandeer those vehicles and get away across the desert, although apparently the giant worms pounced on any small vibrations.

He felt confused, frozen into inaction. Roderick would have known what to do—he would have issued the right orders to arrange an escape, might even have been able to prevent Venport’s treachery in the first place.

Alas, his brother had always been a stronger, more competent person than he was. Many of Salvador’s special guards and advisers were concerned that Roderick might assassinate his brother and take the throne, but Salvador had never worried. Roderick was his closest, most loyal friend.

No, his brother would have kept them all safe. In fact, Roderick had advised him against imperializing the Arrakis spice operations at all. It had been Manford Torondo’s idea, and a very bad one. Roderick had advised him not to go to Arrakis, too. He bit his lower lip and muttered, “You were right, dear brother.”

The guard captain withdrew his Chandler pistol and pointed the deadly weapon at the crew chief’s florid face. “Tell us how to get the Emperor out of here, now! There must be a way.”

Unafraid of the weapon, the chief bellowed back, “There is no way — I’d evacuate my own people if I could! We can’t possibly call in any rescue ships in time. We have only minutes left.”

At the observation window someone screamed — a thin, womanish wail, though it came from a stocky man, the Minister of Mining. Salvador shoved him away and pressed closer to look through the main window. Dust had blown in front of the plaz, obscuring the view.

The guard captain, still waving his ineffective pistol, took over the spice factory’s comm systems, swiftly adjusting to a private frequency to transmit to the Imperial Barge in orbit. “Our Emperor is under attack! Convey this urgent message to Salusa Secundus. Directeur Josef Venport sabotaged the operations and abandoned us to be consumed by a sandworm. I … I do not believe we can survive. I have failed in my sworn duty.”

Hearing this, the barge pilot should know to activate the foldspace engines and race away, returning to the capital world with the news. Roderick would learn the truth, and he would retaliate against Venport Holdings.

Salvador found that satisfying, at least. Everyone was screaming now. Looking through the observation window, he said in a peculiar, matter-of-fact voice, “There’s the worm.”

The eyeless monster burst out of the desert, its mouth a cave filled with sparkling crystal teeth that scooped tons of sand down its gullet as it swept forward.

“It’s so close!” Salvador said, until someone said the thing was still at least two minutes away — the gigantic size made it appear much nearer. The worm hammered forward, the size of a starship. His brain went numb, frozen with terror and disbelief.

Maddened by the pounding vibrations, the worm careened forward, and Salvador had to admit that it was indeed very impressive.

LOOSE ENDS HAD a way of strangling a person. When making his assassination plans, Josef Venport had considered merely leaving the spice harvester to its fate, but he needed to see with his own eyes that the worm swallowed the factory, its crew, and the Emperor’s entourage.

Taref’s news of killing Manford Torondo had been premature, much to Josef’s disappointment, and now the young Freeman had thrown the carefully orchestrated plan into chaos, but thankfully Josef had implemented an emergency backup plan. This was not the way he would have preferred to handle the situation, but it accomplished the necessary purpose anyway.

It was sad to lose the spice crew and crew chief, who had done nothing wrong. This was a high-risk profession, however, and everyone aboard the harvester had known the risks when they signed on. Even spice factories with experienced crews were lost in the desert all the time. At least these people’s sacrifice would strengthen VenHold’s future, as well as that of the melange industry itself, and therefore the economy of Arrakis — along with commerce across the Imperium.

Even more important, with Salvador Corrino gone and a more rational leader in place — someone who could stand up against the barbarians — Josef would prevent the looming dark ages that Norma Cenva had envisioned. Yes, the spice workers would understand his choice, and their sacrifice was unavoidable. He couldn’t save them.

The two spotter pilots who had been paid to report the wormsign to him would be taken to Kolhar. They would remain under tight security and close observation. An evil man would simply have killed them to eliminate the last witnesses — the more cautious course — but these pilots had served him as he’d asked, and Josef always rewarded those who performed their jobs well.

He would keep the pilots alive on Kolhar, granting them their reward (though they might not immediately consider it a reward). Eventually, they would appreciate being sealed into tanks of spice gas and transformed into new Navigators.…

He hoped he had been able to get the message to Norma Cenva quickly enough. He could never tell when she was receptive, when she would just know. But he could always count on her.

Josef guided his escape flyer, looking down at the undulating ground as the sandworm circled the spice factory. On its approach, the worm offhandedly devoured several scout rollers that tried to escape across the dunes. The jettisoned melange container had landed more than a kilometer away in an adjacent valley; he would have someone retrieve it, once the dust settled around here.

Josef was startled and annoyed when Salvador’s guard captain transmitted an urgent tight-beam message to the Imperial Barge, alerting them to the treachery. It would have been simpler to take care of the barge if the crew remained ignorant, but Josef had planned for that already. He sent a signal to orbit. “Grandmother, are you there and prepared?”

He activated a screen in his cockpit, a projection from a nearby VenHold ship in space that was tracking the Imperial vessel. Transmissions were picked up, alarms sounded. Only a skeleton crew remained aboard the barge, but they were already priming their engines and setting their mechanical navigation system to escape. Their old FTL drive would not be fast enough, and he wasn’t sure they could activate the backup Holtzman engines in time.

“I am here,” Norma said. “As are the rest of our warships.”

With a shimmering wink, twenty fully armed VenHold vessels emerged from foldspace to surround the opulent Imperial Barge, weapons activated.

The barge pilot yelped into the comm line. “We’ve been betrayed!”

“Indeed you have,” Josef muttered to himself.

Beneath him as he circled, Josef watched the whirlpool of sand. The giant worm rose up and crushed the spice factory, shearing away the metal plates. All the panicked transmissions ended abruptly. The worm circled back and struck again, then dragged the wreckage of the offending machinery under the surface.

On his cockpit screen, VenHold warships opened fire on the Imperial Barge.

But the Imperial ship, given the brief warning, had already begun its escape — and the crew proved to be unexpectedly swift in their reactions. The VenHold warships launched another volley of projectiles that blackened the barge’s hull, but the pilot activated the emergency Holtzman engines and plunged blindly into foldspace.

Norma’s voice came across the comm line. “They escaped, but they were clearly damaged.”

Frowning, Josef said with a sigh, “A plan can have many prongs. That ship won’t be going anywhere.” He hoped Taref had indeed caused sufficient damage to their navigation systems.

Below, the worm retreated underground, leaving only a churned cauldron with a few rusty smears of spice. All the evidence was gone. And soon, with storms and other weather patterns, the excavation site would look as if it had never been disturbed by man.