Navigators of Dune

81

As Valya coiled to kill him, Korla’s booming voice seemed to make time stop. “Enough! Step away from that man or you’ll be suffering mortal wounds of your own.”

Vorian lay battered and broken on the ground, expecting the next strike to be the deathblow. He was prepared for it. One way or another he had to stop this vendetta, even if it meant the end of his own long life. At least Willem could survive and thrive.

But Korla was preventing the end of the feud. “Let her finish me,” Vor croaked.

“No!” Willem shouted. “Kill him, and I’ll kill you.”

“No,” Vor said. “No, you won’t. This vendetta has gone on too long, for too many generations. It has to stop here!”

The scavengers who had gathered to watch the duel now put an end to it. The hard-bitten workers who had survived so much hardship raised their brute-force projectile rifles and aimed them toward the surviving commando Sisters. They also had daggers at their hips and were ready to fight. If any of the Sisters moved, they would be gunned down. Although Vor understood that they would not surrender easily with their deadly fighting skills, the odds were not in their favor.

“That’s enough, I said,” Korla repeated. “Vorian Atreides leaves here alive.”

Valya flashed a sharp glance at her. “We came all this way to kill the Atreides. I intend to do so.”

“In life, we don’t always get what we want,” Korla said in a mocking tone. “You’ve had your fun. You’ve beaten him.”

“Not enough.”

“But I said it was enough,” Korla answered, with a swirl of her flowmetal cape. “And I rule here, not you.”

Valya seemed torn between her desire to kill Vor and her desire to make him suffer for as long as possible. She looked at all the deadly weapons pointed at her commandos, hundreds of armed scavengers against a handful of women. After reaching an apparent crisis in her mind, she pulled away from Vor, lifted her hands in capitulation, and sneered down at his broken form. “You want me to let him run away.”

“Yes,” Korla said.

“That won’t put an end to it,” Vor said.

“But I will not need to bother with it anymore. Go — get to your ship. Fly out of here before I change my mind.”

Valya’s dark eyes had a sudden unreadable gleam. “Yes, go. Escape in your ship, and we will keep hunting you.” Then, looking over at the pregnant Tula, she added in a voice that made Vor’s blood cold, “Besides, if I ever change my mind, I always have an Atreides I can kill.”

Tula recoiled in shock, and Willem growled, “That’s my brother’s child. It belongs on Caladan, with my family.”

“It is my child!” Tula said.

“It belongs to the Sisterhood,” Valya snapped. “That will be good enough for me to know … and for you to know, Vorian Atreides. Even if you get away, you will always remember that I have your bloodline in my grasp, along with my own bloodline.” She laughed. “I find that acceptable. Go to your ship. Get out of here.”

Feeling his bruises, the cracks in his bones, the blood streaming down his face, Vor pushed himself up from the ground. He wiped blood from his mouth. “I’m your target, not another innocent person. Not Willem. Not an unborn baby.” He turned to the young man, who stood seething. “I want you to go now, Willem — and be safe. Remember where I told you to go.”

Willem interjected. “No, Vor, I’m coming with you now. We’ll leave together on your ship.”

He shook his head. “I put you in too much danger, and that will be the case for as long as you’re with me. I go alone into my unknown future. For your own sake, for the sake of House Atreides, you’ve got to break away from me. Create your own life, and do well.” He suspected Willem would want to return to see Princess Harmona on Chusuk before going to the Imperial Court on Salusa Secundus. “I’ve provided you with everything you need to succeed. You have leadership qualities. Use them.”

Before Valya could declare another blood vendetta against Willem, Korla stepped forward. “Willem will stay here, under my protection, until these bitches are long gone.” Her scavengers gestured with their weapons. Vor looked at the Queen of Trash, and she gave a brief nod. “Go, Vorian Atreides — take your ship. Fly to safety while we hold them here.”

Oddly, Valya just smiled.

The scavengers, including Horaan Eshdi, kept their weapons trained on the frustrated Sisters. Korla said to Valya, “Once Vorian is away safely, you can all go back to whatever you call home. And don’t bother us again.”

Vor did not feel victorious. He just felt cold inside.

Bleeding from dozens of injuries, he glanced at Willem, whose face was filled with a plea. Vor knew this was the last time he would ever see the young man, and said to him, “I’ve tried to leave my past behind many times already. Maybe this time I will succeed.” He limped off through the rubble, winding his way between the unbalanced spires and collapsed skyscrapers of what had once been the thinking-machine metropolis.

Though held back by all the weapons trained against her, Valya called out, “We will keep coming for you, Vorian Atreides.”

He paused and looked back at her. “I know you will.”

THE SCAVENGERS DID not lower their guard even after Vor departed.

Willem wanted to lash out at someone; he felt confused and dissatisfied. He was even more sickened by Tula than he had been before, this young woman who had conceived a child just before murdering his brother. What terrible things would the Sisterhood do to that infant, that innocent child? He had to find some way to save it … but how could he continue his quest to murder Tula, if she was the mother of Orry’s child?

The scavengers waited, their weapons ready. Valya and the commando Sisters looked like bombs waiting for a spark to light the fuse. It was obvious that they didn’t like to feel helpless.

“Well, this is a nice little standoff,” Korla remarked.

With an intense, irresistibly evocative Voice, Valya barked, “Drop your weapons.”

Startled, some of the scavengers did, and their projectile rifles clattered on the rubble. The other Sisters prepared to move forward in attack, but the remaining scavengers primed their weapons.

“Not another word from you!” yelled Korla. “You can command some of us with that witchery, but not all of us at the same time. And we’ll gun you down before you can speak again.”

Sheepish, the scavengers who had reacted to the strange vocal command grabbed their projectile rifles again and stood closer. More than a hundred deadly weapons remained targeted on the Sisters.

Willem squirmed, almost wishing they would make a move.

Vorian had been keeping the New Voyager nearby, and in less than ten minutes they heard the powerful takeoff engines building to proper levels. Willem gazed through the debris of broken buildings with tears stinging his eyes, watching for the ship to lift off, taking Vor to a new world, a new life.

How he longed to go with him! Yes, he understood the opportunities that waited for him at the Imperial Court, but he enjoyed being with the legendary hero who had become his mentor, and loved listening to his stories about the Jihad.

“As soon as I see him fly up to orbit, you’re all free to go,” Korla told the Sisters, crossing arms over her chest. “And we’ll be glad to have you gone. Willem, there’s a spacefolder due here in two days. I will escort you to whatever planet you like.”

Frustrated, Willem mumbled under his breath.

With a rushing thrum of engines, Vor’s personal ship lifted off the ground. The ornate, antique vessel climbed slowly and smoothly into the air. Once in orbit, the FTL engines would be engaged and the ship would leave Corrin and Vor’s pursuers behind.

“We will find him again,” Valya vowed. “We will always be watching.” She stared at the ship with an angry expression on her face.

Willem bit off the words. “You’ve accomplished nothing. Vor’s bruises will heal, and he’s been good at eluding you — and everyone else — for a very long time.”

“Maybe his fate will catch up with him,” Valya said.

Suddenly, with a boom that cracked across the sky like thunder, Vor’s ship exploded in midair. Its engines split open in a fiery geyser that ripped the hull apart. The fuel tanks ignited, adding a double, then a triple fireball.

Willem’s mouth dropped open. He collapsed to the ground moaning, hardly able to speak or breathe. The scavengers stared upward at the expanding debris cloud, crying out in shock.

Large pieces of torn, burning wreckage tumbled out of the sky, pattering into the ruins of the machine buildings. In the sky, a blossom of smoke and flames spread out, then faded like spirits drifting away.

Willem began weeping openly, his hands clenched. He wanted to throw himself on Tula or Valya, but Korla saw his mounting violence and nudged him with the end of a projectile rifle. “Don’t do what you’re thinking, boy.”

Mother Superior Valya stared up at the wreckage in the sky, her face a smug, satisfied mask. “There are many paths to victory. That was not my preference, but Vorian Atreides is dead. It’s a triumph I can accept.”

Willem seethed. These women must have found Vorian’s ship and sabotaged it as a contingency plan, as they were closing in on the tunnels where he and Vor had hidden.

Korla was thinking the same thing. “Did you rig his ship to explode?”

Valya sniffed. “You have no proof of that, do you?”

Korla just glowered at her. The ship was barely a smudge in the sky now, all that remained of the legendary Vorian Atreides, the great Hero of the Jihad, the savior of mankind from the thinking machines.

It occurred to Willem that the Jihad had ended here on Corrin decades ago, and this was where the famous Vorian Atreides eventually met his end as well. Willem could not see any way to call it a fitting end for the greatest man he had ever met, or would ever meet. But some would undoubtedly say exactly that.

Valya skewered Willem with her gaze. “Watch yourself, Atreides pup. A vendetta that has burned so brightly for generations will not just fade away.” Then she and her commando Sisters turned to leave, heading in the direction of the wreckage that had fallen from the sky.