curved doors open to expose an immense hold. Then hundreds of warships were dropped pell-mell from docking cradles and ejected into the emptiness, as if the Heighliner had spewed them from its belly. Afterward, like a great metal whale, the craft moved on, leaving the smaller craft scattered and disoriented.
The audio was filled with comline chatter from the stranded crews and passengers: demands, curses, pleas. One of the embedded images showed Thorvald himself, with his pale skin and large silver-shot beard shaking with fury. “We paid you! We demand our passage.”
The Heighliner did not respond.
“Where are we?” Thorvald shouted. But the Heighliner merely drifted away until the cluster of rebel warships was merely a spray of sparkling lights in its wake, not unlike the stars from which the stranded people had emanated.
Left alone, in the absolute emptiness.
The projection faded, and the viewfield vanished.
In the chamber, Olar spoke. “They are in a great desert of space, and the nearest star system is eighteen parsecs distant. No one but the original Navigator can find them, Sire.”
“How long will their life-support systems last?” Irulan asked.
“A few days, at most. They were expecting only a brief passage.”
Paul’s brow furrowed as he completed his mental arithmetic. “Wait twelve days and have your Navigator retrieve the ships. When you return with the bodies —
Olar bowed, but not before a faint smile touched his lips.
Paul could see from the hard expression on Chani’s face that she would have inflicted a more heinous Fremen torture upon this man who had caused so much harm to the Jihad and to her beloved. But he had seen enough excesses and would not add to them unnecessarily.
Paul turned to his Minister of State. “Stilgar, see to it that this recording is widely distributed amongst my subjects. Many of them have had a taste for Thorvald’s blood for a long time.”
Next he regarded Irulan. “Prepare a message cylinder for Caladan as well. I fear I have trampled the feelings of those people. There are things I want them to know.”
WHEN THE COURIER arrived with the sealed message cylinder and its accompanying copy of the Heighliner holo recording, Jessica stood in a high tower of Castle Caladan. For a long moment, she avoided breaking the seal. It disturbed her to think that she did not really know her own son, that she could not guess what demands Paul — or perhaps it was safer to think of him as the Emperor
Out of habit, she murmured the Litany Against Fear, then opened the cylinder. She ignored the brief formal message from Irulan and sank into a window seat to read the words Paul had written in Atreides battle language on a sheet of spice paper.
“Mother, I have not forgotten Caladan. Its people, its land and oceans are dear to me. I have done, and will continue to do, everything in my power to preserve them.”
She felt a knot form in her stomach as Paul described Thorvald’s plot to devastate Caladan. The knot tightened as she watched the recording of what he had done… and then read of his further intention.
Finally she pressed her lips together and nodded to herself. Yes, her son had asked without asking, wanting her to let the people know. She would show this message to Gurney first, and then they would do as her son wished.
AT STILGAR’S SUGGESTION, the punitive assault on Ipyr — the home planet of Memnon Thorvald — was conducted by House Atreides battleships. Thorvald’s intent to harm Caladan was a blow aimed toward Paul himself, and House Atreides would respond with indomitable force. The punishment inflicted upon Ipyr would resonate across the worlds of the Imperium.
A Heighliner carried one hundred of the largest and most powerful Atreides vessels, each loaded to capacity with weapons, explosives, highly toxic chemical bombs, defoliants, and wide-dispersal incendiaries.
Paul had never given such a frightening command before:
The Atreides ships gave no warning, engaged in no negotiations, gave no quarter to the people of Ipyr. They switched off all but their battle communications systems, so no one would hear the wails of terror, the cries for mercy or, afterward, the resounding silence. The heavily armed vessels circled down, calling up charts of every single planetary settlement, and the annihilation began.
BY THE TONE of the cheering outside the Cala City stadium, Jessica knew that her announcement was exactly what the people needed to hear. In the now rarely used amphitheater that Old Duke Paulus had constructed for his gala bullfighting spectacles, Jessica spoke in a clear voice. Gurney Halleck stood beside her, wearing his best black Atreides uniform.
“Let no one believe that my son has forgotten his beloved Caladan,” Jessica said. “The galaxy knows him as its Emperor, while Fremen praise him as their Muad’Dib. He is the military leader of the most expansive Jihad the human race has experienced in more than ten thousand years… but he is also my son. And the son of your revered Duke Leto.”
Cheering, the people waved their green pennants.
Gurney gave a gruff rumble of agreement, then stepped forward to describe how Thorvald had intended to bring his rebel ships to Caladan, to burn the villages and slaughter the people, inflicting great harm on the homeworld of House Atreides.
“But my Paul has saved you,” Jessica continued. “He has protected Caladan. He will let no harm befall you.”
Inside the large arena, giant projectors had been rigged to display the images of the stranded and doomed rebel warships, left to drift in space, their air failing, food and water gone. By now, everyone aboard would be dead, their bodies retrieved by Guild vessels.
“Paul will never forget Caladan.” Jessica’s voice was soft now. “The Emperor will never forget the people he knew as a boy, the people who helped shape him into a man. He cannot be simply your Duke, but this does not mean he has turned his back on you. Paul will preserve you.
He cherishes what is beautiful about Caladan, and he will guard you with his gentle touch.”
She smiled almost beatifically. The people seemed relieved, content. Yes, they had always known how devoted House Atreides was to them and to Caladan, how benevolent a Duke could be. They would remember.
THE BOMBARDMENT OF Ipyr lasted thirty-three standard hours. Battleships crossed and recrossed the terrain, expending all of their stored weaponry, and when they were done, no building was left standing, no city or village unburned, no field able to produce a crop. The forests were gone, leaving only charred sticks and ash. The sky was a soup of caustic smoke and acidic vapors. The oceans were brown frothing sinks, poisonous to all life, land- and sea-based alike. Some of the larger weapons had set the atmosphere itself on fire.
Afterward the battleships circled in low orbit for two more days, scanning for any transmissions from survivors, any signs of life, mercilessly targeting those few remaining spots that were not completely dead. The log archives and image libraries of the one hundred ships were filled with records of the absolute devastation.
Ipyr might never again support life. It was a new scar upon the galaxy that could neither be ignored nor forgotten.
It was a message from Muad’Dib.
