Ix, at last.

Camouflaged from sensors, the Atreides combat pod looked like just another meteor in its red-hot descent. Piloting the stealth craft, hoping the unresponsive Guild would honor the previous agreement to keep their secret, Gurney Halleck set the controls for the polar regions of the machine world. Beside him, Prince Rhombur sat silently, remembering.

Home again, after twenty-one years. He wished Tessia could be there with him.

Before leaving the Heighliner, when the two infiltrators had sealed themselves into the small combat pod, the Flight Auditor with wide-set eyes had bidden them farewell. “The Guild is watching you, Rhombur Vernius, but we can offer you no assistance, nnnn, no overt assistance.”

Rhombur had smiled. “I understand. But you can wish us luck.”

The Flight Auditor was taken aback. “If such things matter to you, nnnn, then I will do so.”

Now, as the pod plunged through the choppy ocean of air, Gurney grumbled that too many Guild members knew their identity and suspected their covert mission. To his knowledge, a Guild pledge of secrecy had never been broken, but they did accept bribes.

Prouder and stronger than ever before, Rhombur said to him, “Think of how interstellar commerce has suffered since House Vernius lost control of Ix. Do you think the Guild would rather keep the Tleilaxu in power here?”

Gurney’s inkvine scar turned angry red. With the pod’s hull beginning to heat up, he continued the line of descent, gripping the control bar in both hands. “The Spacing Guild is no one’s ally.”

Rhombur’s waxy face showed no flush of emotion. “If they started revealing their passengers’ secrets, their credibility would crumble.” He shook his head. “The Guild will know what we’re up to as soon as they start transporting Atreides forces to Ix anyway.”

“I know all that, but I can’t help worrying. Too many things can go wrong. We’ve been cut off from Duke Leto, held incommunicado on Junction for a month. We don’t know if the plan is still on schedule. We are all running headlong into the dark. ‘The man without concerns is the man without aspirations.’ ”

Rhombur held on as the spherical vessel bounced and careened. “Leto will do as he promised. And so will we.”

They landed hard in an isolated wilderness in the northern latitudes of Ix. The pod came to a rest nestled in folds of snow, surrounded by ice and barren rock. Undetected. The secret tunnel there had been intended for Vernius family members trying to escape a subterranean disaster. Now, though, it was Rhombur’s best opportunity to break back into the world that had been taken from him.

Working together in the cold night, the infiltrators broke down and rearranged the components of their combat pod. Detachable parts of the hull were designed to be reassembled into various forms. Numerous weapons could be removed and distributed to allies; plasteel honeycombs were filled with packaged foods.

Under the starry blackness, the men waited inside a makeshift, thin-walled shelter while Gurney planned the long, steep trudge downward. He was eager for action. While he enjoyed discussing strategy and playing baliset back at Castle Caladan, the former smuggler was a fighter at heart and not entirely happy unless he could be doing something in service to his liege— be it Dominic Vernius, Duke Leto, or Prince Rhombur….

“I may be ugly, but at least I’ll pass inspection as a human. You”— Gurney shook his head, looking at the Prince’s cyborg parts— “will have to come up with a better story in case questions are asked.”

“I look enough like a bi-Ixian.” Rhombur raised his artificial left arm and moved his mechanical fingers. “But I would rather be welcomed as the rightful Earl Vernius.”

All the time Rhombur had spent as an exile, and the recent pain he had suffered, had made him a better leader. He empathized with his people rather than taking them for granted. Now he wanted to earn their respect and loyalty, as Duke Leto had done with the people of Caladan.

During Rhombur’s upbringing in the Grand Palais, while innocently collecting rocks and tapping his fingers in boredom through class after class, he had blithely expected to be the next head of House Vernius— never dreaming that he would have to fight for the position. He, like his sister, had accepted the role into which he’d been born.

But there was so much more to being a leader. And he had suffered much to learn this difficult lesson.

First, the murder of his mother Shando— who he now knew had given birth to another child, Emperor Elrood’s bastard son. Then, after so many years of hiding, Dominic Vernius had committed atomic suicide, taking a number of Sardaukar with him. And Kailea… driven to madness and treachery, trying to grasp what she believed to be hers by right.

Soon there would be more bloodshed, when he and Gurney triggered a subterranean revolution and Atreides forces came in to finish off the invaders. The Ixian people would have to fight again, and many would die.

But every drop of blood, Rhombur vowed, would be well spent, and his beloved world would be free again.