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The old man began to pace around the chamber, holding the package of ultraspice in his hands. He sniffed it.
Paolo turned away from the chess game. "You don't need another Kwisatz Haderach. You have me. Give me spice now!"
Erasmus shot him an indulgent smile. "Perhaps in a little while. First we'll see what the no-ship has for us, who their Kwisatz Haderach is. It should be interesting."
"Where is the vessel?" Khrone asked, focusing on the main question. "Are you sure you have it?"
"Our cruisers are surrounding it even now, and our operatives aboard took steps to guarantee that it could not escape again. Your Face Dancers did a fine job, Khrone."
Omnius interrupted, "And, on a greater scale, our largest battleships are closing in on human defenders in their Old Empire. We will conquer Chapterhouse soon, but that is only one of many simultaneous targets."
"It should be quite a spectacular battle." Erasmus sounded more dry than eager.
The evermind was stern. "Triumph will be assured as soon as the proper conditions are met, according to our mathematical prophecies. Success is imminent."
With glee on his flowmetal face, Erasmus beamed at Paolo and the Baron. "Two Kwisatz Haderachs are better than one!"
Time is a commodity more precious than melange. Even the wealthiest man cannot buy more minutes to put into each hour.
--DUKE LETO ATREIDES,
last message from Caladan
A gossamer net of jeweled colors closed around the Ithaca. The no-ship's engines strained, but could not break away. Scrambling to reassert control over the helm and drag themselves free of the strange bonds, Duncan powered up the Holtzman engines, preparing to rip a hole through the glimmering mesh. It was their only way out.
Glaring at the dead Face Dancer on the deck, Sheeana ordered two Sisters nearby, "Remove that thing from the navigation bridge!" Within moments, the women carried away the limp and bloody shape-shifter.
Now that the net was visible to them all, Duncan focused his Mentat awareness to study the woven grid that ensnared them. He searched frantically for holes or weak spots in the powerful structure, but found nothing to suggest the slightest defect, no frayed point that might allow them to escape.
He would try brute force, then.
Years ago, he had broken free of the net by using the Holtzman engines in ways they had never been designed to function, flying the Ithaca at just the proper angle and speed to penetrate the fabric of space. It had reminded him of a Swordmaster's move, using a slow blade against a personal shield.
"Accelerating now," he said.
Teg leaned over the navigation controls, sweating. "This is going to be close, Duncan." The large ship pulled against the multicolored strands, tore several, and then picked up speed. "We're breaking free!"
Duncan felt a brief moment of hope, a surge of triumph.
An explosion rocked the ship, followed by another, and another. Vibrations and shock waves rang through the hull and decks as if some titan were smashing the vessel with a great hammer. The navigation bridge shuddered.
Holding his chair, Duncan called up diagnostic maps. "What was that? Is the Enemy firing on us?"
The detonations threw Teg to the floor, but he scrambled back to his feet and gripped the console for balance. "The stolen mines! I think we just found them." His words tumbled out in a rush. "Either Thufir or the Rabbi must have set them to go off--" As if to confirm his speculation, another explosion rocked the deck, much closer than before.
The Ithaca reeled out of control, its engines paralyzed. The deck tilted, as artificial gravity generators were knocked offline. Duncan felt a sickening disorientation as the vessel spun off axis.
The shimmering net grew brighter, tightening like a noose.
Finally, out in the distance, Enemy ships drew into view, like hunters approaching a trap they had set. Duncan stared at the external screens. Who had pursued them for so long? Face Dancers? Some vicious, unknown race? What could be frightening enough to drive the Honored Matres back into the Old Empire?
"The bastards think they have us." Duncan made a fist.
"Don't they?" Looking up from his status screens, the Bashar was dismayed by the severe damage indicators lighting up sections of the vessel like fireworks displays. "The mines have ruined our most vital systems, and we're dead in space."
Using Mentat focus, Duncan studied the panels on his command console. The intricate displays showed the strangling net all around them. He jabbed his finger toward a knot in the diagram, an area of pulsing, flickering electronic signals. At first glance the tangle seemed no different from the rest of the interconnected strands, but as he studied it, he thought he might have found a weakness. "Look there."
Teg feverishly bent closer. "A loophole?"
"If only we could move!" Racking his brain, Duncan stalked back and forth in front of the controls. "It would be quite a drunkard's dance to get through that maze--if this ship could fly at all."
"If we all worked together, the entire crew, it would take a week to make repairs. We don't have that much time." The Bashar gestured to the tactical screens that displayed data from the long-distance sensors. "Enemy ships are closing in. They know they've snared us."
Duncan accepted the grim reality. "Holtzman engines are dead. No way to make the repairs in time, no way to escape." He hammered his fists on a panel next to the tangled, pulsing loophole on the console's projections. "But I know I could do it. Why won't this damned ship fly?"
Teg glanced at the sensor blips that indicated the encroaching Enemy, saw the automated damage reports streaming across the display, and knew exactly what had to be done. Only he could do it.
"I can
fix the ship." He had no time to explain. "Be ready." Then he simply vanished.
MILES TEG ACCELERATED his metabolism, kicking himself into the hyper-fast speed he had learned after surviving unendurable torture at the hands of the Honored Matres and their underlings. Around him, time slowed. This would be dangerous to him because of the extreme energy requirements, but he had to do it. The rapidly strobing alarm lights became a slow pulsation that seemed to take an hour for each cycle, brightening and dimming. Re-accessing the archival records of the ship's systems would take too long, but Teg had examined them before. As a Mentat he remembered everything, and now he set to work.
By himself.
Even at his accelerated speed, Teg exerted himself to run as fast as he could. On deck after deck, everyone aboard stood like statues, their expressions showing concern and confusion. Teg flashed past them to the nearest damage sites.
Where the first mine had gone off, he stared in amazement and consternation at the twisted metal, the melted craters in the machinery, the vaporized systems. Teg hurried from one explosion to the next, determining how far the damage extended and which systems were crucial for their immediate escape. The Face Dancer infiltrators had planted and hidden the eight mines well, and each detonation had resulted in a crippling blow: navigation, life-support, foldspace engines, defensive weapons.
Teg made snap decisions. His life had primed him for emergencies; on the battlefield, one could not hesitate. If Duncan couldn't manage to fly the Ithaca away right now, they would never again require life-support systems. He, or someone else, could fix those later. An acceptable gamble. The no-field generators were offline.
Engines. Four of the eight mines had been set to damage the foldspace engines. The Face Dancer saboteur had deliberately flown the no-ship close to the Enemy's stronghold, and the detonations had left them crippled and stranded.
With hyper speed Teg studied, analyzed, and compiled a plan using his Mentat abilities. He inventoried spare materials, replacement components, emergency equipment. He needed to work swiftly with what he had; there was no one to help him. First, he rerouted and reprogrammed the weapons, and prepared them to launch a volley of blasts at the oncoming ships. That might grant them an extra few moments.
