Duncan, though, was someone special. In addition to being his trainer and protector, he was Paul’s best friend. At the command of Duke Leto, the Swordmaster was training Paul in many different fields, and training him hard. Today would be no different. According to the weather report, there would be a storm at sea, and Duncan instructed the young man to fly directly into the teeth of it.
The Swordmaster gazed through the cockpit window, assessing the black tempest gathering several kilometers offshore. Ominous thunderheads swelled as if summoned to a cloud convocation.
“Ready for this, boy?” Duncan asked. “Best way to hone your piloting skills.”
“‘Boy’? Maybe you’ll stop calling me that after I fly into this storm.” Paul could already feel the winds jostling the aircraft, making it harder to control.
“Maybe. We’ll see how you do.”
With acute observation skills learned from his mother, Paul detected an edge of worry in Duncan’s voice. The storm might be bigger than they’d expected, but Paul did not suggest they change their plans. He was ready.
Flying as Duncan had taught him, he banked toward the storm, leveled out, switched off the flapping ornithopter wings, and drew them in tight against the fuselage. The now-fixed wings were a quarter of the length they’d been. This was a sleek aircraft now, like those used by Atreides patrols, capable of swift attack, although this training vessel had no armaments except for a set of fore and aft lascannons.
Paul pushed an accelerator bar next to the control yoke, and the aircraft leaped forward in the air as if eager to dance with the storm. As the thunderheads grew darker around them, Paul dove toward the cloud cover. Even as wind wrenched the craft, Paul centered down into his inner calmness. The aircraft seemed part of him, an extension of his body, and he nudged the vessel for optimum acceleration.
“Good,” Duncan said. “You’re improving.” Out of the corner of his eye, Paul noted that the Swordmaster’s fingers were on the instructor’s controls, ready to activate them if Paul should falter.
Below were skirling surges of energy where the clouds touched the water. Though the creatures were rare, he knew what they must be, and he felt a chill of awe. “Elecrans, Duncan! Look how many!”
“Stay well above them, and we’ll be all right. Go a little higher.”
Paul acknowledged, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the intriguing flashes of living lightning.
The elemental creatures spawned in the sea and needed to remain in contact with the surface of the water or they would dissipate. Sometimes a big wave would send one flying into the air, scattering its water so that it faded into electrical mists. As long as elecrans were firmly connected to the sea, they were extremely dangerous—towers of energy that could discharge dangerous bolts of lightning.
“A trial by fire for you,” Duncan said. “A big one.”
“Isn’t that what you promised?”
They had discussed safe training and dangerous training, and Duncan insisted Paul needed to learn in true high-pressure situations in order to be prepared for real crises. Duke Leto also considered it the optimal teaching method, and it demonstrated his intrinsic faith in Duncan’s abilities that he would ask the Swordmaster to let his son take such genuine risks.
But this elecran-infested storm went beyond any planned curriculum. The elemental creatures intensified the storm, building it to a massive squall with hurricane-strength winds.
The lightning strikes did not often rise above the cauldron of the elecrans but skittered out laterally, as if the electrical creatures were firing at one another in some sort of paranormal competition. When a jagged bolt from one elecran struck another, the target creature’s tower-shaped body bent, bowed, then straightened before it continued to spark and lash.
For several years now, Paul had been learning Duncan’s high-level piloting skills, intricate reflexes, and instant reactions. He admired how confident the Swordmaster always was, but not to the point of hubris. Paul appreciated his friend’s style of excellence, flying at the edge of life and death. Duncan thrived on the surge of adrenaline, and Paul had become addicted as well, walking the razor’s edge, where any small mistake could be a fatal one.
Right now, Paul felt a thrill that intensified every moment, an infusion of emergency energy, vital for survival, as if his body were rising to its maximum efficiency in the face of great peril. His focus, his tension, his sheer skill and instant reactions were beyond anything he had felt before. Glancing at Duncan beside him, he could tell that his trainer’s level of alertness was also elevated.
The tremendous storm was shot through with so many swirling elecran discharges that Paul could not count them.
“Instruments are acting up, too many spurious results,” Duncan cautioned. “Do not rely on the readings.”
“The electrical energy is interfering.” Paul channeled his calm focus again. “I will trust my eyes and instincts.”
“Skirt the edge of the storm, so we don’t lose sight of the coastline. We still need to find our way home.”
Paul altered course, but the tempest was widening fast. Clouds had climbed above them, and heavy sheets of rain lashed the cockpit windscreen. The winds shook the aircraft, threatening to knock it out of the sky.
“I don’t trust my readings, but we’re definitely losing elevation.” As he banked the flyer, he looked out the side window and saw the crackling elecrans less than a thousand meters below, sending out bright flashes of static sparks. Though he had altered course, the flyer still seemed to be heading directly toward them.
The elecrans below snapped out jagged lightning bolts. For a moment, Paul felt entirely disoriented, as if the aircraft had turned upside down, and the skyful of lightning was suddenly overhead. But he’d been in flight training enough to know that he had to rely on his true internal sense of direction. He knew up and down, knew where the shore and Castle Caladan were, although he could not see it through the rain and mist.
The aircraft was losing speed as well as altitude, but he encountered a headwind no matter which direction he turned in an attempt to improve conditions. Beneath them, as if sensing prey, the nest of elecrans quested upward, stretching higher and higher. Paul felt a prickle of electricity on his skin, making his hair stand up.
Duncan fired the forward lascannon, disrupting and decapitating several elecrans. But the elemental swirls of energy quickly re-formed.
As the flyer continued to drop toward the ocean, the sizzling entities combined to form a single hydra-like creature with multiple heads of massed lightning, each one thrusting upward.
“This is too great a danger,” Duncan said. “I’m taking the controls.”
“No, I need to do this.” Paul saw a way to survive and escape, the vision as vivid as if he had glimpsed the immediate future. He knew what was going to happen, and what he had to do.
En masse, the combined elecrans extended higher, like a stretched cone of lightning that maintained contact with the surface of the water. The amalgamated creature flared so brightly that Paul could hardly look at it. Images were burned onto his retinas.
Duncan fired the lasbeam again, scrambling the creature’s energy patterns and making it recoil. Paul concentrated solely on flying, gripping the controls to adjust the tight wings and stabilize their trajectory, catching thermal updrafts and finding tailwinds that helped them accelerate, but the craft ultimately dropped again.