A long-dead poet asserted that it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. That man never saw Salusa Secundus.

—EMPEROR SHADDAM IV, private journals

The new soldiers were already dead to start with, but not so mangled that they couldn’t be repaired. They would fight again. And Shaddam recognized that ghola soldiers had certain special advantages.

Under the blistering orange sky of Salusa Secundus, far from any of the terraforming activities, Count Hasimir Fenring and Bashar Zum Garon accompanied the former Emperor out to an isolated dry canyon. The next corpse ship would arrive soon.

Muad’Dib’s inspectors constantly monitored cargo transports to and from Salusa, but the Tleilaxu handlers of the dead moved freely. In the normal course of events, so many struggling exiles died that a ship to carry off bodies was no particular oddity; no one, however, would suspect that the arriving Tleilaxu vessel was already full—with bodies that had been reanimated by axlotl tanks.

Years earlier, Shaddam had concocted the scheme, and it both pleased and startled Count Fenring that his friend had actually come up with a good idea. The fallen Emperor’s loyal Sardaukar commander, Zum Garon, had negotiated secret terms with the Tleilaxu, and Shaddam had paid for many shiploads of gholas . . . soldiers that were already counted as dead and not marked on any rolls. Legion after legion of completely untraceable fighters to be trained as fierce Sardaukar warriors.

For years now, in exchange for a ridiculous portion of the remaining Corrino fortune, the Tleilaxu had harvested the corpses of dead soldiers from Jihad battlefields and placed them in axlotl tanks to repair their wounds. They restored the fighters to a semblance of life, their memories washed away, their personalities clean slates. Regardless of the various flags under which these men had originally fought, the laboratory-made gholas retained no feelings of loyalty or patriotism. But their muscles remembered how to wield a weapon, and they obeyed orders. Fenring himself had watched the test subjects during a series of mock battles near the Tleilaxu city of Thalidei when dear, sweet Marie was still alive.

Shaddam paced the dirt restlessly. “I am sick of this place, Hasimir, and I want to leave. How many will be enough? The Tleilaxu charge an outrageous amount for each shipment of soldiers. My resources are not boundless!”

“But your ambitions are, Sire, and you must have the army to match them. There is, aahhh, something to be said for soldiers who do not fear death.”

A flash of indignation crossed Bashar Garon’s face. “Sardaukar do not fear death.” The military commander waited next to his Emperor, sweating in his full uniform as the big Tleilaxu ship finally came into view and lumbered toward the ground.

Fenring gave a deferential bow. “As you say, Bashar. I meant no disrespect.” He did the mental arithmetic. “Now that the usurper is dead, ahh, yes, it is time for us to make our move. The Regent is weak and frightened—her own actions demonstrate that.”

Shaddam scowled. “She killed my envoy Rivato after he suggested a perfectly reasonable compromise. Don’t forget that she killed my Chamberlain Ridondo, too, back when she was much younger. A devil of a child.”

“Ahh, hmm, and that shows her impulsiveness. What did she have to gain by slaying Rivato? She must have been afraid of him. And of you, Sire.”

Shaddam kicked a dry clod of dirt as they waited for the Tleilaxu transport to settle onto the landing area. “We have been building—and feeding, and caring for—our ghola army for years now. We need to take advantage of the Imperial power vacuum, and now. That girl cannot possibly hold her brother’s government together.”

“Hmmm, Sire, you yourself saw what that ‘girl’ was capable of when she murdered Baron Harkonnen before your eyes. And she was just a toddler then! Later, she killed my dear Marie, who was herself a trained assassin. As Regent, now, Alia is even worse.” The Count cleared his throat. “Even so, she is incapable of being the leader that Muad’Dib was. She has no finesse, and her tendency to overreact will build resentment among the populace. Fanaticism can go only so far.” He grinned at Shaddam. “Ahhh, yes, I am convinced that our ghola army is nearly ready. A few more shipments, a few more training exercises.”

Bashar Garon had already spent years with the ghola soldiers, testing them with brutally efficient Sardaukar methods, fighting techniques that had made the Imperial terror troops unstoppable for centuries. Both Fenring and Shaddam had seen these huge new legions perform military maneuvers with cold precision that brought a thrill of awe and a shudder of intimidation. The Emperor longed for the restoration of his former glory, and Garon wanted the same thing—to bring back the proud Sardaukar name from the ash heap of history.

But Shaddam’s secret army needed to attack at a precise time and place, a carefully calculated strike that would send shockwaves throughout the fragile structure of Muad’Dib’s Imperium. Regent Alia could never withstand it.

Though the Jihad had officially been over for years, battles still raged on scattered planets, while new signs of strain appeared on the dominated worlds. The writings of Bronso of Ix continued to prod sore spots, raising doubts and emboldening many people to question the supposed “Messiah.” Fenring could not have planned it better himself. As Regent, Alia Atreides must already be feeling her brother’s power slip through her fingertips, after only a few months.

Bashar Garon remained cool. “I am eager to begin an open battle to restore you to the Lion Throne, Majesty. The rogue sandworm in Arrakeen was a good preliminary strike, an opening gambit.”

The fallen Emperor frowned. “I had hoped for dozens of rogue worms to make it through the breach in the Shield Wall. Does that mean the plan was a failure, Hasimir?” His voice had a sharp accusatory tone.

“Even one rampaging sandworm caused a great deal of destruction, Sire, leaving Arrakeen in an uproar. Alia’s Regency already has enough troubles to deal with, and we just added another significant disruption. Some of the locals are claiming it was Muad’Dib’s angry spirit, returning for revenge.”

“What superstitious fools they are!” Shaddam laughed, then paused. “Or did we start the rumors ourselves?”

“We did not need to, Sire.” Fenring consulted his crystalpad, where an intricately coded message described the event on Arrakis. Two of their spies had been killed in the worm’s onslaught, innocent bystanders in the Arrakeen slums, but one surviving operative had sent a detailed eyewitness account. “As the locals scramble to repair the damage, they’re frightened, and some see it as a sign of God’s displeasure in Alia’s rule. That rumor is one of ours. . . .”

The rugged red-walled canyon opened into a sheltered valley, far from prison settlements or Shaddam’s domed city. On schedule, the Tleilaxu corpse ship settled onto the hard-packed ground, stirring a haze of rusty grit with a roar of suspensor engines.

Garon said, “I do not like these ghola troops, but I recognize the need for them, since my efforts to recruit fighters from the prison population here have met with less success than I had hoped.”

Count Fenring knew the secret antipathy Garon held toward the failed Emperor; he blamed Shaddam for the many disasters that had shamed the Sardaukar ranks and cost the life of his own son. “The single legion of Sardaukar loyalists that Muad’Dib let you keep has never, ahh, been adequate for our purposes.”

“Why is it so hard to train the prisoners?” Shaddam snapped. “When I was on the throne, Salusa provided a ready pool of Sardaukar trainees, who were already hardened by survival experiences here.”

Garon bit back an annoyed retort, and said with forced calm, “In those days the prison population was much greater. Kaitain sent shipload after shipload of dissidents here, political prisoners, outright traitors, and violent criminals. Only a small percentage survived, and an even smaller percentage of those became Sardaukar recruits. When the Atreides Emperor stopped sending his prisoners here, our pool dwindled considerably. And his years of terraforming work—which you wanted—have made the Salusan landscape less of a challenge to harden our available men.”

When Paul-Muad’Dib gave his promise to turn this hell into a planetary garden, supposedly as a concession to the defeated Shaddam, Count Fenring had detected subtleties in his reasons: In such a difficult environment, where daily life was a brutal challenge, only the strongest, most resourceful, and most hardened prisoners survived, and thus they became perfect Sardaukar candidates. By softening the populace and dulling the edge of Salusa Secundus, Muad’Dib had hamstrung Shaddam’s ability to find adequate replacements for his terror troops.

For his own plan, however, Shaddam Corrino had looked elsewhere.

When the corpse ship’s hatches opened and a series of parallel ramps extended to the ground, more than six thousand new ghola soldiers marched out. Their uniforms were mismatched—the better to blend in among the planet’s ragtag population. Many of them showed scars from mortal wounds. They had already been indoctrinated by the Tleilaxu, their loyalty programmed to the Padishah Emperor. Their old reflexes, muscles, and automatic responses had been reawakened.

As the last ghola soldiers emerged from the vessel, a gray-robed little Tleilaxu man scuttled toward them, crystalpad projector in hand. The Count knew the man would demand his payment now.

Shaddam looked at the new arrivals, satisfied but somewhat bored. “For the sake of humanity, and the sake of history, Hasimir—we have to get rid of these damnable Atreides monsters, and those bastard twins, too. It would be best if someone just drowned the two babies and had done with them.”

Fenring smiled. “It would be truer Fremen fashion, Sire, if they could be buried alive out in the sands.”