Spending a day in the crowded amusement palace on Zanovar, the Docent Glax Othn had never felt so old… or so young. Dressed in a casual singlesuit of pale green twillcloth, he felt himself gradually begin to relax, forgetting about the mysterious threat to his ward Tyros Reffa.

He laughed with the squealing children and ate sweet confections. He played games that purportedly tested his skill, though he knew the barkers always stacked the odds in their favor. He didn’t care, though it would have been nice to bring a prize back home, just as a memento. The colors and smells of this place whirled around him like a ballet for the masses, and Othn smiled.

Reffa had known exactly what the old teacher needed. He hoped the young man— who was even now on the main Taligari planet— would enjoy the suspensor opera as much as Othn was enjoying this unusual outing.

The day was long and exhausting, but stimulating. Left to his own devices, Othn would never have permitted himself such an unabashedly amusing vacation. His longtime student had taught him a valuable lesson.

Wiping sweat-dampened gray hair from his eyes, Othn looked up just as a shadow crossed the sun. Around him, the music and laughter continued. Someone screamed. He turned to see a daredevil floatdisk whisk overhead in free-form fashion, looping obstacles that stretched high into the air; the passengers held on, shrieking with mock terror.

Then more shadows darkened the sky, large and ominous. At first, the Docent did not imagine that the huge ships could be anything other than a part of the wild show.

Inside the crowded amusement park, people waited in lines for sensory-enhancement rides, mazes, holo-dances. Others tried their luck at food-vendor stands where treats could be purchased for an amusing tale or a song. Many of the people looked up. Munching the last of his crystalfruit confection, the Docent watched with curiosity instead of fear. Until the first weapons began to fire.

In the vanguard ship, Shaddam’s commanding general, Supreme Bashar Garon, directed the devastating strike himself. It was his sworn duty to fire the first shot, to mark the first casualties, to draw the first blood.

An armored ornithopter swooped over the park’s towering sandworm centerpiece, an articulated construction surrounded by false dunes. Explosions tore the air, weapons fire peppered the ground. Sparks accompanied flames and smoke as diaphanous structures collapsed. People screamed and ran.

The Docent’s stentorian voice, made powerful by years of lecturing in halls packed with restless students, roared across the growing noise. “Shelter! Find cover!” But there was no place to hide.

Are they doing this to find Tyros Reffa?

The Supreme Bashar’s Sardaukar death squad wore gray-and-black uniforms. Targeting with steely eyes, sallow-skinned Garon strafed children, melting them into unrecognizable, fused forms. It was only the beginning.

After the first shots scattered the crowds and wreaked havoc, the squadron fired on the sandworm simulacrum. Then they used cutter beams to dismantle the gaudy centerpiece into chunks of smoking metal wreckage, exposing the thick-walled melange vaults buried underneath. In accordance with Imperial orders, the advance troops had to find and retrieve the illegal spice stockpile.

Afterward, the destruction of the main cities on Zanovar could proceed.

Garon set his ‘thopter down atop a pile of crisped human remains, and his soldiers streamed out, firing at anything that moved. The unarmed patrons of the amusement park ran in confusion and terror.

More Imperial gunships set down on the park grounds, disgorging soldiers who streamed into the ruins of the giant sandworm structure. The simulacrum had ostensibly been a simple amusement-park attraction that towered a hundred meters over the landscape, but the giant monument concealed underground tunnels filled with melange.

In the midst of the carnage, only one man dared approach the soldiers through the smoke and bodies, an old teacher. His face was devastated but stern, like a schoolmaster about to discipline unruly students. Zum Garon recognized the Docent Glax Othn from his premission military briefing.

Blood soaked Othn’s shoulder, and the gray hair had been singed off the left side of his head. He seemed to feel no pain, only appalled anger. So much bloodshed, just to hurt Tyros! The Docent, who had delivered many stirring speeches during his tenure, raised his voice, “This is unconscionable!”

The Supreme Bashar, his uniform impeccably clean and unwrinkled, responded with a wry smile as knotted plumes of smoke streamed upward. Burned bodies twitched on the ground, and behind Othn a palatial structure in the amusement complex collapsed with a groan and a bang. “Teacher, you must learn the difference between theory and practice.”

At a hand signal from Garon, his Sardaukar cut down the Docent before he could take another step. Dispassionately, the Supreme Bashar turned his attention back to the ruined sandworm structure to oversee the recovery operations. Surrounded by acrid fumes, he removed a private log recorder from his uniform pocket and dictated a report to Shaddam as he observed the carnage.

Immersed in the smoke and stench of the catastrophe, bands of Sardaukar loaded the gunships with contraband spice. Like swollen bumblebees, the ‘thopters lumbered into the skies toward waiting transport ships. The Emperor would deliver the confiscated melange as a reward to CHOAM and the Spacing Guild. With self-righteous confidence, he would declare this the opening salvo of his “Great Spice War.”

The Supreme Bashar anticipated exciting times ahead.

Operating on a tight timetable, Garon ordered his remaining ground troops to return to the large military vessels. With the recovered melange safely in hand, the rest of the annihilation could be accomplished from a distance; Garon would watch from his command chair without dirtying his hands. The squadron lifted off, oblivious to the moans of the injured, the screams of children.

The heavy battleships moved into low orbit. From there, they would finish the job of leveling the city, and then they would target a certain nearby estate.

In Reffa’s fern gardens, a hot breeze picked up, rippling the verdant fronds with a sound like fluttering feathers. Charence, the property administrator, switched off the fountain cascades as he walked up the slope. He had already commissioned gardeners and aquatic engineers to complete a full maintenance check of the fountain systems while his master was away on Taligari.

Meticulous in his duties, Charence took great pride in knowing that Tyros Reffa never even noticed the work he did on the estate. This was the best compliment an administrator could hope to receive. The gardens and household ran so smoothly that his master never had cause for complaint.

The Docent had assigned Charence to serve Tyros Reffa from the moment the mysterious boy had arrived on Zanovar, more than four decades ago. The loyal servant had never asked questions about the boy’s parentage, or the source of his inexhaustible fortune. Charence, a focused man with plenty of responsibilities, had no time for curiosity.

As the last trickles of water drained from the fountain cascade, he stood inside the flowtree gazebo atop a flagstoned knoll. Workers in overalls carried buckets and hoses as they marched toward piping substations carefully hidden in the mushroom gardens. Charence could hear them whistling and chattering in the clear air.

He never noticed the warships overhead. The estate manager focused on the real world around him, rather than looking at the sky above. Lasgun blasts tore through the air like bolts hurled by an angry thunder god. Sonic booms of ionized air flattened the trees. Parks and lakes crackled on the horizon, vaporized into a dead plain of glass.

Eyes aching from the brilliant light, Charence looked up now, watching the myriad bolts of destruction intersect at Reffa’s estate. He stood frozen, unable even to flee. He faced the storm as a locomotive of hot wind howled toward him.

Flames rolled across the landscape like red tsunamis, a stampede of white-hot incandescence that flashed the patchwork fields and forested areas into oblivion so quickly that even smoke didn’t have a chance to rise.

When the shock wave passed by, it left nothing of the beautiful gardens or buildings. Not even rubble.

In the shimmering city of Artesia, on the night side of the Taligari homeworld, Tyros Reffa attended the glamorous suspensor opera alone. He sat in a private box, intent on understanding the nuances and complexities of the show, enthralled by the color and spectacle.

All in all, he enjoyed it very much and looked forward to sharing his experience with the Docent when he got home to Zanovar.…