Navigators of Dune

In all, seven of the beasts surged along, coiled for violence but kept under control by their Freemen riders. The normally territorial creatures did not like being in close proximity to other worms, but Modoc could use their instinctive anger in a different way. The worms would lash out against any target the desert warriors designated—and Modoc planned to give them that target.

The sandworms arrived at the old sietch at sunset, when the shadows were long and Venport’s spice bank was preparing to lock down for the night. Though the sunlight was low and blinding near the horizon, the enormous worms could not be hidden as they stormed out across the desert. This would be an open attack, a full onslaught.

Modoc prepared his fighters as the worms reached the line of rocks. They guided the first creature toward a once-narrow defile that VenHold engineers had widened for access. As the worm approached, four demolition experts leaped off its back, carrying explosive packs. They landed on the sand and rolled, then rushed to the safety of rock, where they implanted the powerful canisters.

Inside the former sietch, VenHold security forces sounded emergency alarms and brought their weapons to bear on the intruders, but the desert commandos planted their bombs and slipped away into openings in the rugged rock formation. The nearly simultaneous blasts sent columns of fire and smoke into the sky, triggering a sustained rumble of avalanches as the cliff walls fell—widening the gateway to the desert.

Modoc drove his worm forward into the breach, and the other six followed. He knew how much spice wealth was contained inside the vaults, and though he had struggled with possibilities for more profit, he could not find a way that he and his people could seize it all for themselves and sell it back to the Imperium.

Emperor Roderick had ordered him to destroy Venport’s stockpile. He remembered a Zensunni proverb, “What is stolen once can be stolen again, but what is destroyed is gone forever.” They would take what they could, carrying it in packs on their backs as they fled, but they had to move swiftly through the desert.

As the behemoths plunged through the enlarged passageway into the sheltered basin, Modoc and his fighters were ready to let the collective Shai-Hulud do the destruction for them. These worms were a weapon against which Venport’s mercenary fighters could not defend.

The sandworms surged into the enclosed rocky arena fronting a curvature of cliffs that held the protected spice bank. Choosing their time carefully, the desert people slid down the crusty worm segments, dismounted, and raced toward the most protected rocks.

Venport’s mercenary force opened fire, cutting down some of the Freemen. Modoc saw ten of his fighters fall, but that was unavoidable. They were all heroes.

As the worms smashed into anything within reach, the Freemen dropped additional explosive packs along the bases of the cliffs, bigger ones this time, with activated timers.

Venport’s defenders didn’t have a chance.

Knowing what was to come, Modoc and his fighters jogged away and took shelter just before the additional explosions went off. A thunderous series of blasts shook the rocks and weakened the cliff faces. Trapped within the enclosed rock walls, the worms became thrashing, violent battering rams.

Modoc and his commandos backed off to watch the destruction, letting the sandworms do most of the work for them. The behemoths hammered themselves against the cliffs, breaking down the caves and crushing anything that moved. The Freemen would wait until the fury had run its course, with the sietch devastated, and then they would set new explosives to release the trapped sandworms from their enclosure, hoping all of them survived. He convinced himself that they would; it would take a lot more than rock walls to destroy Shai-Hulud.

After letting the worms out, the Freemen would slip in to kill any surviving defenders that hid in the deep tunnels. They would take all the water and blood they liked, and their treasure in spice would be far more than they could carry.

When Modoc took his people back to the new sietch, he wouldn’t even have to embellish the story of what had happened to make this day one of the most legendary in the history of his tribe.

To negotiate, both parties must want something that is tangible and compatible. If one party wishes only the destruction of the other, no solution can exist.

—Landsraad League records, Salusan proceedings