The Sardaukar yelled to the pilot, “Our Emperor is aboard. Go!” More nobles flooded the rooftop, rushing toward the evacuation ships. Several Sardaukar remained behind, sacrificing their lives so the lighter could take off unimpeded. They blocked more panicked guests who boiled up the narrow evacuation stairway.
The lighter’s pilot lurched them into the air on suspensor engines. The alarming acceleration crushed the passengers against the bulkhead. Leto was pressed against the plaz windowport, dizzy and disoriented while the vessel spun, aligning its axis and swooping around the Imperial Monolith in its steep ascent out of the danger zone.
Looking down, Leto saw the bright museum complex below, a smear of images, countless figures running along the bright streets. A flurry of other ships rose into the air like startled dragonflies. Leto was relieved to see some others getting away at least.
Shaddam and Aricatha belted themselves into seats in the crowded passenger compartment. Fenring had squirmed into a corner, pulling his knees up to his chest against the acceleration. Leto and the colonel bashar struggled to situate themselves as heavy thrust crushed them against the deck.
“I cannot believe this,” Shaddam said. “My museum complex, my festival!”
Leto forced his words out against the crushing acceleration. “All those people.” He looked at the lighter’s passenger compartment. “I wish we could have saved more.”
“No time.” The Sardaukar narrowed his gaze and added a sharp frown. “I made a risky decision to include you, Atreides. I will not hear your objections.”
“You said the Emperor ordered it.”
“I know the Emperor’s wishes.” The officer fell silent as they streaked higher. What did he mean by that?
Leto’s heart ached for his Caladan pilot and crew, remembering how Arko had wanted to buy souvenirs for his sweetheart and his young nephews. The pilot and crew would surely have been out in the city, looking at exhibits, sampling delicacies from food vendors. Even if they had heard Leto’s warning over the site-wide comm system, Arko and the others were loyal to their Duke. Even if they made it back to the space yacht, they would have waited for him, refusing to leave without Leto. They would have waited.…
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Is it possibly a false alarm?” Fenring asked. “Are we overreacting?”
“No, sir,” said the colonel bashar. “Duke Leto’s warning is confirmed. Three sabotaged dump boxes will impact the museum complex.”
“Damn this Jaxson Aru!” Shaddam shouted. “I want him found and executed—slowly and painfully.”
“We must escape first, Sire, hmmm?” Fenring said. “Let us wait to be vindictive until we are safely back on Kaitain.”
“They are simply objects falling from orbit,” Aricatha said. “How can the aim be so precise as to strike the Imperial Monolith?”
The Sardaukar frowned, and Leto already knew the answer. “The kill zone from so many explosive, high-mass impacts will extend for dozens of kilometers. They do not need to be pinpoint accurate.”
The escape ship lurched to starboard, and the acceleration increased. The pilot called back, “Here they come! I’m giving them a wide berth.” The lighter rocked back and forth, buffeted by turbulence.
Leto caught a glimpse of an orange ball hurtling down through the air, a tumbling mass of molten metal like an old-style artillery projectile, with explosives added. Farther in the distance, he saw two more orange streaks, projectiles plummeting toward the surface. Leto had seen these objects from orbit and knew their size and the tons of inert mass in each of them. There was no possible way to stop them.
Shaddam’s face was crimson as he stared. Working against the acceleration, Leto shifted his body so he could see through the windowport that faced the planet. The dread inside him felt stronger than gravity. Under the press of acceleration, Leto felt the small lump of the holo-player with Jessica’s message. “Jessica…,” he whispered. “Paul…”
The three massive objects hammered into the surface of Otorio, one after another in quick succession, annihilating the Emperor’s new city.
Leto squeezed his eyes shut an instant before the impacts, and the flare of released light still seared through his eyelids. Those sequential flashes had signified the end to thousands of lives.
“Those rare artifacts can never be replaced,” Shaddam snarled.
“But we survived,” Fenring said, “thanks to the astute observations of Duke Leto Atreides.”
“We owe you our lives,” said Empress Aricatha.
Leto felt a surge of resentment and strained against the acceleration to sit upright. “Yes, we survived. I survived.”
Down below, the blazing light rippled outward. The city complex was a molten scar.
“Breathe easily, dear cousin,” Shaddam said to him. “We are safe.”
Leto turned back to the windowport and stared at the rising holocaust below.
When do dreams become reality, and when does reality slip into dreams?
—PRINCESS IRULAN, The Book of Muad’Dib
It wasn’t the first time Paul had dreamed of the mystery girl. As he slept, his mind’s eye saw the young woman standing high on a rock formation, profiled against the sunset, a painter’s palette of spectacular colors splashed across the sky. The sunlight was too yellow, the shadows too sharp, the terrain too dry to belong on Caladan.
The young woman wore a strange suit that clung to her form, a tube extending from her collar to her mouth. She moved with light, agile steps down a dusty path as Paul followed her, captivated. She slowed enough to make sure he followed her, and then ducked into a rocky, dimly lit tunnel.
In the dream, Paul wore an Atreides jacket, but it was scuffed and torn, as if he had been in a battle. Recently. The air was hot, dry, and dusty as he followed her inside the cleft, hurrying to keep up. His eyes adjusted to the shadows.
She paused, smiled back at him, and led him deeper into the tunnels and chambers.
He caught up with her inside a cavern and got a better look at her. She looked to be about his age, quite beautiful with an elfin face, dark red hair, and intense blue eyes that gazed at him in a way he’d never seen before. He reached out to take her hand, and she smiled again, in her special way. He knew her in his heart, somehow, but he didn’t know her name. He reached out—
The image faded as he woke, gasping. Paul sat up in bed, shivering. He felt lost, longing for the mysterious young woman. He wanted the dream back, but it was gone, leaving him with only a faded image of her form, her face, and a distant recollection of the touch of her hand.
Paul closed his eyes and searched for her in the darkness of his mind, trying to return to the dream. He lay back with a sigh and finally drifted off to sleep again, still looking for her in the haze of slumber. He remembered the hot dryness of the air and tried to bring that back as a door into his vision.
Inside his bedchamber in the castle, he fell into another dream, but she was not there, no matter where he looked. This was different.
Unable to locate her or the distinctive rock formation again, he found his dream-self instead standing in the shadowy corridor of a large stone-walled structure—Castle Caladan? No, that didn’t look right. In some large and imposing structure, he was running to warn his father. It was urgent! Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Duke Leto was in danger, real danger, and Paul needed to reach him in time! The corridor branched off in two directions. Which one should he take?