Road to Dune (44 page)

When the warning bells shrieked, Elto snapped awake and rolled from his bunk bed. His uncle, Hoh Vitt, already in full sergeant’s regalia, shouted for everyone to hurry,
hurry!
The Atreides house guard grabbed their uniforms, kits, and weapons. Elto recalled allowing himself a groan, annoyed at another apparent drill … and yet hoping it was only that.

The burly, disfigured weapons master Gurney Halleck burst into the barracks, his voice booming commands. He was flushed with anger, and the beet-colored inkvine scar stood out like a lightning bolt on his face. “House shields are down! We’re vulnerable!” Security teams had supposedly rooted out all the booby traps, spyeyes, and assassination devices left behind by the hated Harkonnen predecessors. Now the lumpish Halleck became a frenzy of barked orders.

Explosions sounded outside, shaking the barracks and rattling armor-plaz windows. Enemy assault’thopters swooped in over the Shield Wall, probably coming from a Harkonnen base in the city of Carthag.

“Prepare your weapons!” Halleck bellowed. The buzzing of lasguns played across the stone walls of Arrakeen, incinerating buildings. Orange eruptions shattered plaz windows, decapitated observation towers. “We must defend House Atreides.”

“For the Duke!” Uncle Hoh cried.

Elto yanked on the sleeve of his black uniform, tugging the trim into place, adjusting the red Atreides hawk crest and red cap of the corps. Everyone else had already jammed feet into boots, slapped charge packs into lasgun rifles. Elto scrambled to catch up, his mind awhirl. His uncle had pulled strings to get him assigned here as part of the elite corps. The other men were lean and whipcord strong, the finest hand-picked Atreides troops. He didn’t
belong
with them.

Young Elto had been excited to leave Caladan for Arrakis, so far away. He had never ridden on a Guild Heighliner before, had never been close to a mutated Navigator who could fold space with his mind. Before leaving his ocean home, Elto had spent only a few months watching the men train, eating with them, sleeping in the barracks, listening to their colorful, bawdy tales of great battles past and duties performed in the service of the Atreides dukes.

Elto had never felt in danger on Caladan, but after only a short time on Arrakis, all the men had grown grim and uneasy. There had been unsettling rumors and suspicious events. Earlier that night, as the troops had bunked down, they’d been agitated but unwilling to speak of it, either because of their commander’s sharp orders or because the soldiers didn’t know enough details. Or maybe they were just giving Elto, the untried and unproven new comrade, a cold shoulder … .

Because of the circumstances of his recruitment, a few men of the elite corps hadn’t taken to Elto. Instead, they’d openly grumbled about his amateur skills, wondering why Duke Leto had permitted such a novice to join them. A signalman and communications specialist named Forrie Scovich, pretending to be friendly, had filled the boy with false information as an ill-conceived joke. Uncle Hoh had put a stop to that, for with his Jongleur’s talent for the quick, whispered story—always told without witnesses because of the ancient prohibition—he could have given any of the men terrible nightmares for weeks … and they all knew it.

The men in the Atreides elite corps feared and respected their supply sergeant, but even the most accommodating of them gave his nephew no preferential treatment. Anyone could see that Elto Vitt was not one of them, not one of their rough-and-tumble, hard-fighting breed … .

By the time the Atreides house guard rushed out of the barracks, they were naked to aerial attack because of the lack of house shields. The men knew the vulnerability couldn’t possibly be from a mere equipment failure, not after what they’d been hearing, what they’d been feeling. How could Duke Leto Atreides, with all of his proven abilities, have permitted this to happen?

Enraged, Gurney Halleck grumbled loudly, “Aye, we have a traitor in our midst.”

Illuminated in floodlights, Harkonnen troops in blue uniforms swarmed over the compound. More enemy transports disgorged assault teams.

Elto held his lasgun rifle, trying to remember the drills and training sessions. Someday, if he survived, his uncle would compose a vivid story about this battle, conjuring up images of smoke, sounds, and fires, as well as Atreides valor and loyalty to the Duke.

Atreides soldiers raced through the streets, dodging explosions, fighting hard to defend. Lasguns sliced vivid blue arcs across the night. The elite corps joined the fray, howling—but Elto could already see they were vastly outnumbered by this massive surprise assault. Without shields, Arrakeen had already been struck a mortal blow.

ELTO BLINKED HIS eyes in the cave, saw light. A flicker of hope dissipated as he realized it was only a recharged glowglobe floating in the air over his head. Not daylight.

Still trapped in their tomb of rock, the Atreides soldiers listened to the continued thuds of artillery. Dust and debris trickled from the shuddering ceiling. Elto tried to keep his spirits high, but knew House Atreides must have fallen by now.

His uncle sat nearby, staring into space. A long red scratch jagged across one cheek.

During brief inspection drills while settling in, Elto had met Gurney Halleck and the other important men in Duke Leto’s security staff, especially the renowned Swordmaster Duncan Idaho and the old Mentat assassin Thufir Hawat. The black-haired Duke inspired such loyalty in his men, exuded such supreme confidence, that Elto had never imagined this mighty man could fall.

One of the security experts had been trapped here with the rest of the detachment. Now Scovich confronted him, his voice gruff and challenging. “How did the house shields get shut off? It must have been a traitor, someone you overlooked.” The distrans bats seemed agitated in their cages at Scovich’s waist.

“We spared no effort checking the palace,” the man said, more tired than defensive. “There were dozens of traps, mechanical and human. When the hunter-seeker almost killed Master Paul, Thufir Hawat offered his resignation, but the Duke refused to accept it.”

“Well, you didn’t find all the traps,” Scovich groused, probing for an excuse to fight. “You were supposed to keep the Harkonnens out.”

Sergeant Hoh Vitt stepped between the two men before they could come to blows. “We can’t afford to be at each other’s throats. We need to work together to get out of this.”

But Elto saw on the faces of the men that they all knew otherwise : they would never escape this death trap.

The unit’s muscular battlefield engineer, Avram Fultz, paced about in the faint light, using a jury-rigged instrument to measure the thickness of rock and dirt around them. “Three meters of solid stone.” He turned toward the fallen boulders that had covered the cave entrance. “Down to two and a half here, but it’s dangerously unstable.”

“If we went out the front, we’d run headlong into Harkonnen shelling anyway,” the gunner Deegan said. His voice trembled with tension, like a too-tight baliset string about to break.

Uncle Hoh activated a second glowglobe, which floated in the air behind him as he went to a bend in the tunnel. “If I remember the arrangement of the tunnels, on the other side of this wall there’s a supply cache. Food, medical supplies … water.”

Fultz ran his scanner over the thick stone. Elto, unable to move on his makeshift bed and fuzzed with painkillers, stared at the process, realizing how much it reminded him of Caladan fishermen using depth sounders in the reef fishing grounds.

“You picked a good, secure spot for those supplies, Sergeant,” Fultz said. “Four meters of solid rock. The cave-ins have cut us off.”

Deegan, his voice edged with hysteria, groaned. “That food and water might as well be in the Imperial Palace on Kaitain. This place … Arrakis … isn’t right for us Atreides!”

The gunner was right, Elto thought. Atreides soldiers were tough, but like fish out of water in this hostile environment.

“I was never comfortable here,” Deegan wailed.

“So who asked you to be
comfortable
?” Fultz snapped, setting aside his apparatus. “You’re a soldier, not a pampered prince.”

Deegan’s raw emotions turned his words into a rant. “I wish the Duke had never accepted Shaddam’s offer to come here. He must have known it was a trap! We can never live in a place like this!” He stood up, making exaggerated, scarecrowlike gestures.

“We need water, the ocean,” Elto said, overcoming pain to lift his voice. “Does anybody else remember
rain
?”

“I do,” Deegan said, his voice a pitiful whine.

Elto thought of his first view of the sweeping wastelands of open desert beyond the Shield Wall. His initial impression had been nostalgic, already homesick. The undulating panorama of sand dunes had been so similar to the even patterns of waves on the sea … but without any drop of water.

Issuing a strange cry, Deegan rushed to the nearest wall and clawed at the stone, kicking and trying to dig his way out with bare hands. He tore his nails and pounded with his fists, leaving bloody patterns on the unforgiving rock, until two of the other soldiers dragged him away and wrestled him to the ground. One man, a hand-to-hand combat specialist who had trained at the famous Swordmaster School on Ginaz, ripped open one of their remaining medpaks and dosed Deegan with a strong sedative.

The pounding artillery continued.
Won’t they ever stop
? He felt an odd, pain-wracked sensation that he might be sealed in this hellhole for eternity, trapped in a blip of time from which there was no escape. Then he heard his uncle’s voice … .

Kneeling beside the claustrophobic gunner, Uncle Hoh leaned close, whispering, “Listen. Let me tell you a story.” It was a private tale intended only for Deegan’s ears, though the intensity in the Jongleur’s voice seemed to shimmer in the thick air. Elto caught a few words about a sleeping princess, a hidden and magical city, a lost hero from the Butlerian Jihad who would slumber in oblivion until he rose again to save the Imperium. By the time Hoh Vitt completed his tale, Deegan had fallen into a stupor.

Elto suspected what his uncle had done, that he had disregarded the ancient prohibition against using the forbidden powers of planet Jongleur, ancestral home of the Vitt family. In the low light their gazes met, and Uncle Hoh’s eyes were bright and fearful. As he’d been conditioned to do since childhood, Elto tried not to think about it, for he too was a Vitt.

Instead, he visualized the events that had occurred only hours before … .

ON THE STREETS of Arrakeen, some of the Harkonnen soldiers had been fighting in an odd manner. The Atreides elite corps had shouldered lasguns to lay down suppressing fire. The buzzing weapons had filled the air with crackling power, contrasted with much more primal noises of screams and the percussive explosions of old-fashioned artillery fire.

The battle-scarred weapons master ran at the vanguard, bellowing in a strong voice that was rich and accustomed to command. “Watch yourselves—and don’t underestimate
them
.” Halleck lowered his voice, growling; Elto wouldn’t have heard the words if he hadn’t been running close to the commander. “They’re in formations like Sardaukar.”

Elto shuddered at the thought of the Emperor’s crack terror troops, said to be invincible.
Have the Harkonnens learned Sardaukar methods
? It was confusing.

Sergeant Hoh Vitt grabbed his nephew’s shoulder and turned him to join another running detachment. Everyone seemed more astonished by the unexpected and primitive mortar bombardment than by the strafing attacks of the assault’thopters.

“Why would they use artillery, Uncle?” Elto shouted. He still hadn’t fired a single shot from his lasgun. “Those weapons haven’t been used effectively for centuries.” Though the young recruit might not be well practiced in battle maneuvers, he had at least read his military history.

“Harkonnen devils,” Hoh Vitt said. “Always scheming, always coming up with some trick. Damn them!”

One entire wing of the Arrakeen palace glowed orange, consumed by inner flames. Elto hoped the Atreides family had gotten away … Duke Leto, Lady Jessica, young Paul. He could still see their faces, their proud but not unkind manners; he could still hear their voices.

As the street battle continued, blue-uniformed Harkonnen invaders ran across an intersection, and Halleck’s men roared in challenge. Impulsively, Elto fired his own weapon at the massed enemies, and the air shimmered with a crisscross web of blue-white lines. He fumbled, firing the lasgun again.

Scovich snapped at him. “Point that damn thing away from me! You’re supposed to hit
Harkonnens!
” Without a word, Uncle Hoh grasped Elto’s rifle, placed the young man’s hands in proper positions, reset the calibration, then slapped him on the back. Elto fired again, and hit a blue-uniformed invader.

Agonized cries of injured men throbbed around him, mingled with frantic calls of medics and squad leaders. Above it all, the weapons master yelled orders and curses through twisted lips. Gurney Halleck already looked defeated, as if he had personally betrayed his Duke. He had escaped from a Harkonnen slave pit years before, had lived with smugglers on Salusa Secundus, and had sworn revenge on his enemies. Now, though, the troubadour warrior could not salvage the situation.

Under attack, Halleck waved his hands to command the entire detachment. “Sergeant Vitt, take men into the Shield Wall tunnels and guard our supply storehouses. Secure defensive positions and lay down a suppressing fire to take out those artillery weapons.”

Never doubting that his orders would be obeyed, Halleck turned to the remainder of his elite corps, reassessing the strategic situation. Elto saw that the weapons master had picked his best fighters to remain with him. In his heart, Elto had known at that moment, as he did now thinking back on it, that if this were ever to be told as one of his uncle’s vivid stories, the tale would be cast as a tragedy.

In the heat of battle, Sergeant Hoh Vitt had shouted for them to trot double-time up the cliffside road. His detachment had taken their weapons and left the walls of Arrakeen. Glowlamps and portable illuminators showed firefly chains of other civilian evacuees trying to find safety in the mountainous barrier.