Over the nightside of Ix, a scheduled cargo shuttle dropped from the hold of an orbiting Heighliner. From the uninhabited wilderness, a hidden Sardaukar observation post watched the craft’s orange plume as it descended into their detection grid. The shuttle headed toward the port-of-entry canyon, the guarded access point to the subterranean capital city.

Sardaukar observers did not notice a second, much smaller craft slipping into its wake. An Atreides combat pod. By virtue of a heavy bribe, the Heighliner was fitted with a camouflage-signal transmitter that tricked the ground-based trackers so that the black, unlit shape could move undetected, long enough for Gurney Halleck and Thufir Hawat to slip underground.

Gurney worked the controls of the tiny, wingless craft. Taking a different trajectory from the shuttle’s plume, the black Atreides pod sped low across the rugged northern landscape. Lightless onboard instruments whispered data into his headset, telling him how to avoid the guarded landing cradles.

Gurney used daredevil skills he had learned from Dominic Vernius in a smugglers’ band, streaking over boulder fields, skimming close to glaciers and high cirques. When he hauled contraband cargoes, he had known how to elude Corrino security patrols, and now he remained beneath the detection level of the Tleilaxu security net.

As the pod jostled through the atmosphere, Thufir sat placidly in Mentat mode, weighing possibilities. He had recorded all of the emergency exits and secret routes Rhombur had managed to remember. But human concerns kept breaking his concentration.

Although Leto had never criticized him for what might have been interpreted as security breaches— the death of Duke Paulus in the bullring, the skyclipper disaster— Thufir had redoubled his efforts, calling upon every skill in his personal arsenal, and adding more.

Now, he and Gurney had to infiltrate the besieged cities of Ix, ferret out weaknesses, and prepare for an outright military action. After the recent tragedies, Duke Leto was no longer afraid to bloody his hands. When Leto decided it was time, House Atreides would strike, and strike hard.

C’tair Pilru, a resistance fighter with whom they had long been in contact, had refused to abandon his efforts on Ix, despite crackdowns by the Tleilaxu invaders. Using stolen materials, he had fashioned effective bombs and other weapons, and for a time had even received secret assistance from Prince Rhombur— until all contact had been lost.

Thufir hoped they could find C’tair again this night, while there was still time. He and Gurney, acting on a few shreds of possibilities and a likely meeting place, had tried to send messages underground. Using an old Vernius military code that only C’tair would know, supplied by Rhombur, the warrior Mentat had proposed a possible rendezvous in the honeycomb of secret routes and hidden chambers. But the Atreides infiltrators had received no confirmation.… They were flying blind, led only by hope and determination.

Thufir gazed through the pod’s small windows to get his bearings, contemplating how they would go about finding the Ixian freedom fighters. Though it was not part of any Mentat analysis, he feared they would need to depend on… luck.

Huddling in a musty storeroom in the upper crustal levels of what had once been the Grand Palais, C’tair Pilru harbored his own doubts. He had received the message, decoded it… and didn’t believe it. His small-scale guerrilla war had continued for years and years, not always because of victories and hope, but because of sheer determination. Fighting the Tleilaxu comprised C’tair’s entire life, and he did not know who he was or what he would be if the struggle ever ended.

He had survived this long by trusting no one in the once-beautiful underground city. He changed identities, moved from place to place, struck as hard as he could and then fled, leaving the invaders and their Sardaukar guard dogs in angry confusion.

As a favorite mental exercise, he pictured the original city in his mind, the gossamer connecting walkways and streets between stalactite buildings. He even envisioned the Ixian people as they used to be, filled with cheer and purpose, before the grim reality of the Tleilaxu invasion set in.

But now it all blurred in his memory. It had been so long.

A short while ago he had found the communication— a trick?— from representatives of Prince Rhombur Vernius. C’tair’s entire life had been a risk, and now he had to take the chance. He knew that as long as Rhombur lived, the Prince would never abandon his people.

In the cold darkness of the storeroom, waiting, waiting, C’tair wondered if he was in fact losing his hold on reality… especially now that he knew the terrible fate of Miral Alechem, his lover and comrade, who might have become his wife under different circumstances. But the filthy invaders had captured her, used her body for their mysterious, awful experiments. He resisted visualizing Miral the way he had last seen her— an abomination, a brain-dead shape hooked up and converted into some hideous biological factory.

With every breath he took, he cursed the Tleilaxu for their cruelties. He squeezed his dark, haunted eyes shut, controlled his breathing, and remembered only Miral’s large eyes, her narrow, attractive face, her raggedly cropped hair.

Rage, near-suicidal despondency, and survivor’s guilt washed through him. He had set his mind on a fanatical course, but if Prince Rhombur had truly sent men to aid him, this nightmare might soon be over.…

A sudden loud whir of machinery made him scramble deeper into the shadows. He heard quiet scratchings, the skilled picking of a lock, then the hatch of a self-guided lift chamber opening to reveal two silhouetted figures. They hadn’t seen him yet. He could still flee, or try to kill them. But they were too tall to be Tleilaxu and did not move like Sardaukar.

The older man looked tough as shigawire, with a sinewy face and the sapho-stained lips of a Mentat. His burly blond companion, a lumpy man with a prominent scar on his face, pocketed a small set of tools. The Mentat stepped out of the lift first, exuding wary confidence. “We come from Caladan.”

C’tair didn’t move or reveal himself. His heart raced. It might still be a trick, but he’d come this far. He had to find out for sure. His fingers touched the hilt of a hand-wrought dagger in his pocket. “I am here.”

C’tair emerged from the shadows, and the two men looked toward him, eyes adjusting to the low illumination. “We are friends of your Prince. You are no longer alone,” said the scarred man.

Moving cautiously, as if stepping on broken glass, the trio met in the center of the dusty storage room. They clasped hands in the half handshake of the Imperium, made awkward introductions. The new arrivals told him what had happened to Rhombur.

C’tair looked dazed, not certain anymore where reality and his fantasies separated. “There… was a girl. Kailea? Yes, Kailea Vernius.”

Thufir and Gurney looked at each other, avoided the uncomfortable revelation for now. “We don’t have much time,” Gurney said. “We need to see and learn what we can.”

C’tair faced the two Atreides representatives, trying to decide where to begin. Raw anger built inside, filling him with so much emotion that he could not bear to tell them what he had already seen, what he’d already endured here. “Stay, and I will show you what the Tleilaxu have done to Ix.”

Unobtrusively, the three men moved through crowds of oppressed workers, past facilities that had degenerated into decrepitude. They used C’tair’s numerous stolen identification cards to enter and exit security zones. This lone rebel had learned how to pass unnoticed, and the downtrodden Ixians rarely looked at anything other than their own feet.

“We’ve known for some time that the Emperor is involved here,” Thufir said. “But I cannot understand the necessity for two full legions of Sardaukar.”

“I have seen… but I still don’t know the answers.” C’tair pointed out a sluggish monstrosity lumbering across a loading dock, a machine with a few human components strapped on… a battered head, part of a bruised and misshapen torso. “If Prince Rhombur is a cyborg, I pray it’s nothing like what the Tleilaxu have created here.”

Gurney was appalled. “What sort of demon is that?”

“Bi-Ixians, victims of torture and execution, reanimated through machinery. They aren’t alive, just mobile. The Tleilaxu call them ‘examples’— they are toys for the amusement of demented minds.”

Thufir stood dispassionately, mentally filing away every detail, while Gurney had trouble controlling the revulsion on his face.

C’tair managed a grim smile. “I saw one with a paint sprayer strapped to his back, but the thing’s biomechanics broke down and stopped moving altogether. He had the sprayer full-on when he fell, and two Tleilaxu Masters got doused with pigment. They were furious, shouting gibberish at the machine-thing, as if it had done it intentionally.”

“Maybe it did,” Gurney said.

In the ensuing days the trio investigated and observed… and hated what they saw. Gurney wanted to fight right away, but Thufir advised caution. They needed to go back and report to House Atreides. Only then— with the Duke’s permission— could they formulate a plan for an effective, coordinated assault.

“We’d like to take you back with us, C’tair,” Gurney offered, compassion plain on his face. “We can get you out of here. You have already suffered enough.”

C’tair was alarmed at the suggestion. “I’m not leaving. I… I wouldn’t know what to do if I stopped fighting. My place is here, tormenting the invaders any way I can, letting my surviving countrymen know I haven’t given up, and never will.”

“Prince Rhombur thought you might say that,” Thufir said. “We have brought many supplies for you in our combat pod: explosive wafers, weapons, even food stores. It is a start.”

C’tair felt dizzy with the possibilities. “I knew my Prince hadn’t given up on us. I have awaited his return for so long, hoping to fight side by side with him.”

“We will take our report to Duke Leto Atreides and to your Prince. Be patient.” Thufir wanted to say more, to promise something tangible. But he did not have the authority to do so.

C’tair nodded, anxious to begin anew. At last, after so many years, powerful forces might aid him in his fight.