Since his uncle the Baron rarely let him have free rein, Beast Rabban decided to cause as much mayhem as possible, now that he had been given the opportunity.

He studied the crude and incomplete maps of settlements around the Shield Wall. Squalid townfolk lived there, people who survived by scavenging and by stealing Harkonnen property in the middle of the night. In punishment for the Fremen raids on spice stockpiles, the Baron had told his nephew to obliterate three such villages. Rabban chose the targets, not quite at random, but because he didn’t like their names: Licksand, Thinfare, and Wormson.

Not that it made much difference to him. People all screamed pretty much the same.

The first village he simply firebombed from the sky. With a group of attack ‘thopters, his men swooped low and dropped incendiaries into dwellings, schools, and central markets. Many people died at once, while the remainder ran about like furious insects on a hot rock. One man even had the audacity to shoot up at them with an antique maula pistol. Rabban’s sidegunners used the villagers for target practice.

The devastation was swift and complete, but Rabban found it ultimately unsatisfying. He decided to take more time with the other towns….

Alone in his quarters at the Carthag Residency, Rabban had worked long hours before the raids to compose a terse proclamation explaining why these people must all be killed and their villages destroyed in retaliation for Fremen crimes. Upon showing his handiwork proudly to his uncle, however, the Baron scowled and tore up the note, then wrote a proclamation of his own, using many of the same words and phrases.

After each attack, those leaflets (printed on flameproof instroy paper) were scattered among the smoldering remains of the obliterated village. Other Fremen would descend like vultures upon the ruins, no doubt trying to pick cheap jewelry from the charred bones. Thus, they would learn why the Baron had decreed such brutal punishment. They would feel the blame….

For the second village, Thinfare, Rabban marched in with ground troops. They all wore shields and carried hand weapons. A few held back with flamecannons in case they needed to finish the massacre in a hurry, but the Harkonnen troops fell upon the hapless villagers with swords and daggers, slashing right and left. Beast Rabban joined in the slaughter with a broad grin on his face.

Back on Giedi Prime, in the giant prison city of Barony, Rabban had often trained children to become victims of the hunt. He had selected the most resourceful and most determined boys to become his special prey during amusing outings at the isolated Forest Guard Station.

He didn’t necessarily find that murdering children was more satisfying than killing adults, who were often far more creative and more earnest in groveling for their lives. Children didn’t have sufficient imagination to comprehend the fate they were about to suffer, and rarely showed enough genuine fear. Also, many children had an innocent faith in God, a naive belief in a protector who would save them. They believed and they prayed up to the last moments of their lives.

In the village environment, however, Rabban discovered a new technique with children that gave him more pleasure. It was emotionally satisfying, igniting a warm flame in his heart. He liked to watch the faces of anguished parents as he tortured and then slew their own children in front of them….

In the third village, Wormson, Rabban discovered that he could increase his victims’ abject terror by distributing the Baron’s dire proclamation prior to his attack. That way, the captives knew exactly what lay in store for them before the shooting began.

At times like these, Beast Rabban was proud to be a Harkonnen.