Navigators of Dune

Beneath the abandoned factory hull, the great worm surfaced, its eyeless head questing from side to side, as if to chase intruders from its territory. Safe on his outcropping, Draigo watched with analytical fascination as the worm smashed the abandoned equipment and then plunged back into the dune ridge, burrowing deeper until it left only a gully of stirred sand. All marks would be erased as soon as the next windstorm came to sculpt the dunes all over again.

Draigo walked back to his desert-rigged flyer, already planning his analysis of this operation, the cost of the sacrificed equipment, and the most efficient dispersal of scout flyers in future operations. He would make any necessary modifications.

He fired up the engines, and the dusty armored craft lifted up from the rocks and into the rising thermals. When he was airborne, flying out over the dunes, he thought, I am a Mentat, and I shall continue to adapt myself to this world.

It was his duty to do this. Headmaster Albans had also taught him ethics and dedication. A graduate of the Mentat School on Lampadas might be assigned to one nobleman or another, but now Draigo—the Imperial Overseer of Spice Operations—was himself a master, and Arrakis was his de facto fief, his planet to rule.

First he needed to know the place, really know it, to avoid making mistakes. He looked forward to the learning experience.

Your appointment is a significant success for our family, but you must always be alert or we will lose the ground we have gained, as surely as a stone falls under the pull of gravity.

—Valya’s admonition to Danvis on his arrival at Imperial Court

Vorian Atreides was dead, and thanks to Valya’s steady efforts, House Harkonnen was finally on the rise again. She took personal credit for the progress. This paramount goal had always shone like a guiding light in her mind, and—as she had hoped—she could guide both the Sisterhood and House Harkonnen into a bright future. She realized her focus was more intense than anyone else’s in the family, more than her siblings or their parents, but she’d stepped into a void. After being downtrodden for more than eight decades, the Harkonnens had grown to accept their situation. They’d become sedentary.

Valya had never done that.

For too long, thanks to Vorian Atreides, the Harkonnen name had been synonymous with cowardice and dishonor. But her nemesis—their nemesis—was dead, at last. She’d seen it with her own eyes.

After so much anticipation, Valya would have preferred to kill the man herself and watch the life fade from his eyes … but the explosion of his ship in the sky had been satisfying in its own way. She had caused it, and that was enough. Using their own comparisons to genetic records, her commando Sisters had tested blood found on some of the tumbled wreckage and confirmed that it was indeed Vorian’s.

When she had seen the DNA results, even though she was already certain Vor had been killed in the explosion, she felt a surge of triumph … or at least she wanted to. In her heart, however, the victory felt somehow flat. She didn’t know what she had expected to feel—exhilaration, perhaps? Instead, it was a curious sense of finality, reaching the end of a dark goal that had driven her for so much of her life. Was it enough? It had to be enough.

But … what now?

She knew the answer to that even as the whispers of Other Memory became louder in the back of her mind. Now, without that life-consuming distraction, she could focus entirely on letting House Harkonnen rise unhindered to the prominence it deserved. And she could build the Sisterhood into an extremely powerful, if quietly invisible, organization. One success would drive the other, and vice versa.

She wanted so much for her family, and most of all perhaps for Danvis, who would carry on the bloodline—as an important Landsraad lord, the planetary ruler of Lankiveil. Valya had to make sure her brother was up to the task. Her brother …

Suddenly, Valya’s heart felt heavy with a pang of memory. Griffin should have been the future patriarch of the family, not Danvis. Griffin, her closest friend, who had shared so much with her, the same goals, the same vision for House Harkonnen.

Until he was killed by Vorian Atreides. She had heard the man deny it, and even though the Truthsayer verified that Vor had not been lying, Valya refused to believe it. Perhaps Vor in his twisted mind had utterly convinced himself of his lack of culpability. Or maybe he had found some other way to engineer Griffin’s death without actually soiling his own hands, but Valya would not absolve him of responsibility. It was his fault.