The baking red heat of a foundry bathed Mother Superior Harishka’s parchment face. The bitter odors of metallic alloys, impurities, and electrical components churned inside the molten mass contained within the large crucible.

A procession of robed Sisters approached the cauldron furnace, each carrying a component of the wrecked Harkonnen craft. Like ancient islanders presenting offerings to a volcano god, they tossed broken pieces into the furious crucible.

The secret ship was being digested slowly into a viscous soup that resembled lava. The industrial thermal generators vaporized organic material, broke down polymers, and melted metals— even the space-tempered hull plates. Every scrap must be destroyed.

After altering the memories of the three Richesian inventors, Harishka had determined that no one had enough information to resurrrect Chobyn’s renegade work. Once the Bene Gesserit destroyed the remnants of this lone vessel, the dangerous invisibility technology would be gone forever.

The Sisters had worked like black-robed ants, swarming over the hulk at the bottom of the rock quarry. They tore the ship apart, plate by plate, using white-hot laser cutters to chop sections into manageable pieces. The Mother Superior had no doubt that it would have been impossible to glean clues from even those fragments, yet she insisted on completing the job.

Erasure must be total and absolute.

Now, the commando Sister Cristane came forward into the acrid smoke from the roiling crucible, holding a wire-studded power generator of unknown design. To the best of their knowledge, this was a key part of the invisibility field projector.

The strong and implacable young woman paused to stare into the fire, unbothered by the heat that made her cheeks ruddy and threatened to singe her eyebrows. Muttering a silent prayer, she tossed the jagged component into the flames and remained where she was, watching it melt and sink, darkening the scarlet-and-orange soup as it decomposed into the mix.

Watching this, Harishka felt something stir in Other Memory, the whispers of a long-ago life, a similar experience in her ages-old genetic past. Her ancient ancestor’s name surfaced… Lata.

Though language had been crude then, incapable of conveying subtleties, she had lived her life well. Lata had watched her men work with bladder bellows to pump air, increasing the temperature inside a crude stone smelter they had constructed near a lakeshore. Harishka had no names in her internal archives for that lake, or even for the land. She had watched the men smelting iron ore, perhaps from a meteorite they had found, using the metal to forge crude work blades and weapons.

Sifting through the collective memories, Harishka noted other instances of metallurgy, as her ancestors had participated in the development of copper, bronze, and then far-more-sophisticated steel. Such innovations had made kings out of warriors, and superior weapons had enabled them to conquer neighboring tribes. Other Memory connected only the female genetic line, and Harishka could recall watching wars and swordmaking from the periphery, while she gathered food, made clothes, bore children, and buried them….

Now she and her fellow Sisters were using an ancient technology to destroy an awesome innovation. Unlike those long-ago warlords that she had watched through layers of past lives, Harishka decided not to use her new weapon, and to prevent anyone else from using it, as well.

More Sisters threw pieces of the ship into the foundry. The smoke grew thicker, but Harishka did not move from her spot near the blistering rim. After the crust of floating impurities was skimmed off, the molten metal mixture would be used to cast useful items for the Mother School. Like proverbial swords beaten into plowshares.

Although the Bene Gesserit had eliminated any possibility of the invisibility generator being rebuilt by outsiders, Harishka still felt uneasy. Her Sisters had studied the crashed ship in detail, and though they didn’t understand how to reassemble the pieces, they maintained an accurate mental record of every scrap. Someday they would transfer the information into Other Memory. There, locked within the collective consciousness of the Bene Gesserit, it would remain sealed forever.

The last Sisters in the procession tossed pieces into the crucible, and the only no-ship in existence vanished forever.