Navigators of Dune

Scowling, Valya said, “I want the Harkonnens to be strong again, and that means the Atreides must be weak, or dead.” She brightened. “Even so, I am glad you’ve returned to us, safe. And now that we know for certain Vorian Atreides is looking for you, I will send out my operatives. We will locate him again, and next time I’ll use all the resources of the Sisterhood to finish him off.”

Instead of the happy response Valya had hoped for, her sister merely ate the rest of her meal in silence.

What some men see as aspirations, others see as obligations. Either way, we find ourselves trapped.

—DIRECTEUR JOSEF VENPORT, private conversation with his wife, Cioba

The loss of the huge spice bank on Arrakis was a disaster by any measure, and Josef had not even begun to calculate the second- and third-order costs to Venport Holdings. The initial investigation suggested that the raiders had used giant sandworms.

The stunning attack revealed a considerable vulnerability, of which he had been entirely unaware. Not only had the catastrophe cost him an incalculable fortune in spice to be sold throughout the Imperium, Norma’s Navigators would now face short supplies. And because she had pulled all of his battleships away from the siege of Salusa in response to the raid, Josef had lost that gambit as well.

A cascade of setbacks.

Knowing how much his great-grandmother valued and protected her Navigators, he wasn’t surprised she would rush off to save the spice bank—but, oh, the damage she had done in that moment of almost certain victory. It made the VenHold fleet look like skittish, impotent cowards, running away from Roderick Corrino and the half-Manford’s capering savages. The timing could not have been worse.

Now it would require all of his capabilities to rebound. The victory he sought was not about achieving wealth and power, but to safeguard humanity’s future. If he let the antitechnology fanatics win, the human race would certainly face an unprecedented dark age.

He left part of his fleet at Arrakis to make damned certain no one threatened his spice operations again. Josef and his remaining ships returned to Kolhar, where he could regroup and prepare his next move. He looked forward to seeing Cioba again. She would help him decide what to do.

But when the VenHold ships arrived at the headquarters planet, his wife had more bad news for him. While the bulk of the warships had been away, Admiral Umberto Harte had staged a daring overthrow of the foldspace carrier that had been holding his Imperial battle group hostage. They were gone.

Cioba showed him images as he stared in disbelief. “They nearly tore the hull apart, then made their way to the Navigator deck and took control.” She turned her dark eyes downward. “I sent ships to intercept them, but the carrier folded space and vanished before we could block their way.”

Josef reeled, feeling as if another giant boulder had crashed down on him from an unexpected direction. Norma Cenva, in her tank, listened and finally pronounced in a grave, eerie voice, “The Emperor has captured one of my Navigators.”

Josef struggled to control his anger. He refused to let yet another disaster destroy him. He would find a way to snatch a victory out of even this collapse. He was Josef Venport, Directeur of Venport Holdings, and he refused to throw away a lifetime of work—generations of work.

Canceling all meetings, he locked himself in his high tower offices, asking to be alone. Brooding, he paced the room and looked out the plaz windows at the bustle of arriving and departing ships on the landing field. He worked out which part of the problem to tackle first.

Even with Harte’s ships returned to the Imperial Armed Forces, it wasn’t likely the Emperor would come to Kolhar, or Arrakis, in a direct attack. Emperor Roderick badly needed the reinforcements at Salusa, and although Admiral Harte’s ships were not spacefolders, they did represent a significant military force. They could defend the planet, if Josef ever attempted his siege again. And who knew what the Butlerians might do with all those antique ships?

Worse, though, they had kidnapped one of his Navigators!

For years, rival foldspace shipping companies such as Celestial Transport and EsconTran had tried to learn how to create the superior mutated humans, but no one else had succeeded—even though it was obvious they were immersed in tanks of spice gas, that was only part of the secret.

Now, however, Roderick had a live specimen that he could poke and prod and interrogate and even dissect. Josef dreaded what the Imperial researchers would discover. It was just possible that his scientists might be able to derive the secret.