Navigators of Dune

Roderick nodded. “It’s all personal, Admiral. And that man has escaped too many times for me to underestimate him again.” He remembered how Venport had strolled into the Imperial Audience Chamber to congratulate him after the coronation—knowing all the while that he had assassinated Salvador. Norma Cenva had whisked him away the moment his crime was exposed, and Venport could escape just as easily now. Like a greased worm.

But Roderick wouldn’t let him.

From the Admiral’s flagship, which had once been Emperor Jules’s grand flagship, Roderick gazed out at his large Imperial fleet. “After all that man has done, I will not give him a way to save face, and I will not withdraw and send in an unarmed team as if we are merely negotiating a trade deal! The time to be reasonable is past, and I will not show weakness. Venport has made himself as much an enemy of the Imperium as Manford Torondo ever was. We have the upper hand. Let’s finish this.”

Admiral Harte straightened, looking pleased. “He’s right below us—we can easily destroy the laboratory domes from orbit.”

“My sister is down there, Admiral. She’s an innocent and always has been. We can’t just carpet bomb the domes. Under the circumstances, I want a surgical strike.”

Harte nodded. “You make it more difficult, Sire, but it can be done. First, though, we need to neutralize his warships in orbit.”

“In that, Admiral, you may proceed with all the resources at your disposal.”

The Sisterhood school teaches that love is dangerous, which I have always found puzzling. Obviously, there is a great deal about this emotion that I do not understand.

—ERASMUS, final Denali Notebooks

Invasion alarms rang throughout the laboratory domes, but Anna was already running away. She did not care about political problems or space fleets. Her world had fallen apart. Sirens summoned everyone to their posts, and military transmissions from the VenHold fleet in orbit warned of an imminent attack. Denali personnel raced through the corridors in a panic.

But Anna was too absorbed in her own misery. She pressed her hands to her ears, ducked her head, and continued to run, uninterested in the crisis. In her state of mind all the noise sounded like mocking laughter, faceless shouts that seemed to taunt her with a merciless twisting of the knife.

Her heart was not just broken; it was shattered. Her mind was already a fragile construct held together by cobwebs and memories, and now it had curled up to hide from the reality she could not bear to face. She had surrendered her heart, her soul, her deepest self to Erasmus. She had unleashed her passion, shared every feeling with him. And she had been fooled, betrayed.

It was entirely her fault. She was aware that Erasmus was cold and unfeeling, an evil thinking machine, but Anna had cheated herself into believing he had changed. She had saved him from certain destruction during the fall of the Mentat School, and thought he felt something special for her in return. She thought she had repaired the robot’s dark spirit and healed him with love, helping him understand what it meant to be a human being.

But he viewed everything she had done for him and given him as nothing more than an experiment. An experiment! She felt so violated. He said he was finished with her, had no time for her. Other concerns were more important.

Back when she was a young girl on Salusa, Emperor Jules had forced her to watch brutal public and private executions—“for her own good,” he said—but those horrific experiences had scarred rather than strengthened her. Her brother Salvador had also tormented her, stealing every chance at happiness she might have had; then he’d sent her away to the Sisterhood on Rossak, where she thought she had friends, where Sister Valya had been her companion. But Valya had manipulated her too, tricked her into taking the “agony” poison that destroyed her mind. It was another experiment!

In her own family, Anna had once believed that Roderick, at least, truly loved her, that he was on her side. Yet he hadn’t wanted to deal with her eccentricities either, so he sent her away to the Mentat School.

Too many people had taken Anna’s heart, crushed it in an iron grip, and then abandoned her.

Erasmus was supposed to have been her closest friend of all, her lover, her true love. She had devoted herself entirely to him as the lifeline that kept her damaged mind together. Isolated here on Denali, at least she had him, and for a short while it had been paradise for her. She had been deliriously happy.

But now it was all smashed to bits. Erasmus’s flippant dismissal showed her that, once again, she had been tricked by her soft heart. He was no better than Hirondo, the lover her brothers had sent away from her on Salusa Secundus.