And another upthrusting orange glare!
It was like an ancient naval battle, remembered shellfire, and the sight held them staring.
"Pillars of fire," Paul whispered.
A ring of red eyes lifted over the distant rock. Lines of purple laced the sky.
"Jetflares and lasguns," Jessica said.
The dust-reddened first moon of Arrakis lifted above the horizon to their left and they saw a storm trail there--a ribbon of movement over the desert.
"It must be Harkonnen 'thopters hunting us," Paul said. "The way they're cutting up the desert . . . it's as though they were making certain they stamped out whatever's there . . . the way you'd stamp out a nest of insects."
"Or a nest of Atreides," Jessica said.
"We must seek cover," Paul said. "We'll head south and keep to the rocks. If they caught us in the open . . ." He turned, adjusting the pack to his shoulders. "They're killing anything that moves."
He took one step along the ledge and, in that instant, heard the low hiss of gliding aircraft, saw the dark shapes of ornithopters above them.
= = = = = =
My father once told me that respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. "Something cannot emerge from nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable "the truth" can be.
-from "Conversations with Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
"I've always prided myself on seeing things the way they truly are," Thufir Hawat said. "That's the curse of being a Mentat. You can't stop analyzing your data."
The leathered old face appeared composed in the predawn dimness as he spoke.
His sapho-stained lips were drawn into a straight line with radial creases spreading upward.
A robed man squatted silently on sand across from Hawat, apparently unmoved by the words.
The two crouched beneath a rock overhang that looked down on a wide, shallow sink. Dawn was spreading over the shattered outline of cliffs across the basin, touching everything with pink. It was cold under the overhang, a dry and penetrating chill left over from the night. There had been a warm wind just before dawn, but now it was cold. Hawat could hear teeth chattering behind him among the few troopers remaining in his force.
The man squatting across from Hawat was a Fremen who had come across the sink in the first light of false dawn, skittering over the sand, blending into the dunes, his movements barely discernible.
The Fremen extended a finger to the sand between them, drew a figure there.
It looked like a bowl with an arrow spilling out of it. "There are many Harkonnen patrols," he said. He lifted his finger, pointed upward across the cliffs that Hawat and his men had descended.
Hawat nodded.
Many patrols. Yes.
But still he did not know what this Fremen wanted and this rankled. Mentat training was supposed to give a man the power to see motives.
This had been the worst night of Hawat's life. He had been at Tsimpo, a garrison village, buffer outpost for the former capital city, Carthag, when the reports of attack began arriving. At first, he'd thought: It's a raid. The Harkonnens are testing.
But report followed report--faster and faster.
Two legions landed at Carthag.
Five legions--fifty brigades! --attacking the Duke's main base at Arrakeen.
A legion at Arsunt.
Two battle groups at Splintered Rock.
Then the reports became more detailed--there were Imperial Sardaukar among the attackers--possibly two legions of them. And it became clear that the invaders knew precisely which weight of arms to send where. Precisely! Superb Intelligence.
Hawat's shocked fury had mounted until it threatened the smooth functioning of his Mentat capabilities. The size of the attack struck his mind like a physical blow.
Now, hiding beneath a bit of desert rock, he nodded to himself, pulled his torn and slashed tunic around him as though warding off the cold shadows.
The size of the attack.
He had always expected their enemy to hire an occasional lighter from the Guild for probing raids. That was an ordinary enough gambit in this kind of House-to-House warfare. Lighters landed and took off on Arrakis regularly to transport the spice for House Atreides. Hawat had taken precautions against random raids by false spice lighters. For a full attack they'd expected no more than ten brigades.
But there were more than two thousand ships down on Arrakis at the last count--not just lighters, but frigates, scouts, monitors, crushers, troop-carriers, dump-boxes . . .
More than a hundred brigades--ten legions!
The entire spice income of Arrakis for fifty years might just cover the cost of such a venture.
It might.
I underestimated what the Baron was willing to spend in attacking us, Hawat thought. I failed my Duke.
