Navigators of Dune

“But is this just a threatening growl? I am the Emperor—does he really mean to destroy political stability throughout the Imperium?”

Inside the command center, tacticians displayed images from orbit, as Roderick’s embattled captains inundated the Palace with panicked requests for instructions and reinforcements. “VenHold ships outnumber ours three to one, Sire, and their weapons are superior.”

“As is their coordination,” said Aliki, wearing a deep frown.

Roderick felt helpless anger and dismay. “We have to resist them, fight in every way possible. We are in the right!” His heart felt cold, and he was unable to find a way that his defiance would be anything more than empty words. Would the people fight for him, or would they pledge their allegiance to a new Emperor Venport?

When the VenHold invaders launched orbital drop-pods, several Imperial warships tried to intercept them, but the siege vessels opened fire and neutralized the Imperial fighters, targeting engines only and removing those ships from play so that the drop-pods could continue their descent.

“The VenHold ships do not seem intent on destroying our fleet or killing our soldiers.” Aliki sounded puzzled. “They have exercised obvious restraint. They are just preventing us from interfering with whatever they’re doing.”

Roderick drew little hope from that observation. As the drop-pods streaked down through the atmosphere, evacuation alarms sounded across Zimia. One of the Imperial guards stepped up, his face grim. “Sire, we have to move you to a safe place—the emergency command center. Our shielded underground chambers should be proof against any attack.”

Roderick straightened as the drop-pods continued to hurtle down. Big pods. “Take Haditha and our children first. I shall remain at my post. I can lead better from here.”

Commander Aliki put a firm hand on his arm. “You can’t lead if you’re vaporized, Sire. They could have brought atomics, and we don’t have the planetary shields in place to withstand such a bombardment.”

Haditha sounded more outraged than afraid. “Atomics are forbidden!”

“Treason against the Emperor is also forbidden,” Roderick pointed out to her. “I wouldn’t look to Venport to follow every rule.”

Once the drop-pods crashed around the outskirts of the Imperial capital, they disgorged armored walkers taller than most buildings. Cymeks! Roderick felt nauseated.

With utmost urgency, guards escorted him and Haditha to the secure underground chambers, where Roderick stared in dismay at displayed images of the enormous articulated machines.

Cymeks had not struck Zimia in more than a century. Back during the Jihad they had been deflected by powerful high-energy shields in the Salusan atmosphere, but after the annihilation of the thinking machines and the rebuilding of civilization, the enormous expense of maintaining the shields against cymeks had been deemed unnecessary. Machines posed no further threat to the human race.

But now more than thirty giant warrior forms emerged from the drop-pods and advanced toward the capital city. Ground troops mobilized, along with artillery to defend against the cymeks, but the machines easily brushed off the attack. They looked capable of leveling Zimia if they wished.

For now, however, the cymeks stopped outside the city and simply loomed there, threatening.

Then Josef Venport finally transmitted his ultimatum.

Honor is the backbone of the Freemen of the desert, and our tribes are bound by unbreakable trust and respect. The honor we show to offworlders, however, is entirely different.

—MODOC, Naib of his sietch

The caves of his tribe’s new sietch were spacious and secure. Modoc was surprised that no other Freemen had discovered them, and they were made habitable in short order. His people resented being forced to move from their ancestral home, where generations had lived in harmony with the desert, but he thought they took offense too easily. The new sietch they had constructed was basically the same as the old one, in Modoc’s opinion, and the huge fees they collected from Josef Venport would grant his people many more luxuries.

His father, Naib Rurik, had been a bitter and unimaginative man, shunning improvements to his tribe’s standard of living. He had spurned outside offers of food, medicine, and equipment. Modoc had laughed when his weakling brother Taref talked about the wonders of the Imperium, but that had been primarily to curry favor with their father. At the time, the Naib’s own horizons had extended no farther than the walls of the caves and the surrounding desert, and he was not impressed by his son’s talk.