The Sister Mentat gave her an indulgent smile, but quiet anger simmered beneath her controlled expression. “I’m not unwary, nor a fool. And the Lampadas swamps have ferocious predators as dangerous as any Rossak can offer.”
Valya realized that she herself should attempt more finesse. Even before becoming a Reverend Mother, she had observed many subtle connections in the political and personal web of Sisters — factions, alliances, rivalries, resentments, all under the guise of formalized teaching and philosophical debate. But that had changed when the Sisterhood itself split apart. Now, Valya vowed, she would help the true Sisterhood on Wallach IX to be strong, unified, focused.
And since the Mother Superior would have to name her successor soon, Valya needed to make certain the old woman made the correct decision. Valya felt envious when Raquella was with Fielle or when she showed interest in other Sisters — but voices in Valya’s mind, wise voices from Other Memory, counseled her to rise above such pettiness, for the sake of the Sisterhood and its mission to improve mankind. Valya had heeded such advice, but turned a deaf ear when the same voices suggested that she abandon her ambitious goals for House Harkonnen, so she could focus entirely on the Sisterhood.
Valya herself was absurdly young, in physical years, to be considered for such a monumental role. But for a Reverend Mother, with countless generations of experiences inside her, physical age was irrelevant. Her drive and determination, though, were her own.
If she became the Mother Superior, she would need to lead all of the Sisters, from the freshest acolyte like Tula to the wisest Reverend Mother. She couldn’t let Raquella see her act petulantly or childishly. She had to forge alliances, not break them. Their true enemies were the orthodox Sisters on Salusa and the betrayer Dorotea.
Now, she suppressed her feelings of antipathy toward Fielle and considered the good in the other young woman. Fielle was talented, but so new and untested that she could not possibly be Raquella’s replacement. For Valya to keep herself paramount in Raquella’s mind, and to demonstrate that she was rising above pettiness, the best solution was to turn Fielle into an ally, perhaps through her friend Olivia.
After a moment of assessment and consideration, Valya smiled warmly and said to Olivia, “You are part of my team for a good reason. In addition to the jungle hazards, we have to watch for any Imperial troops Salvador left behind. As a Sister Mentat, you might be able to see dangers that even I don’t detect. We have to make this a swift and smooth mission.”
Olivia seemed relieved. All the tense muscles in her face relaxed. “Our work here is vital for the Sisterhood. Each of us is an important member of the team.”
As the shuttle continued its descent, Valya looked through the windowport at the night-darkened planet below. She spotted a few city lights spangled in the murky wilderness. Although the Sisterhood School had been uprooted and the primary cliff city abandoned, many people still lived on Rossak: entrepreneurs, harvesters, scouts, even exiles.
According to an intelligence report that Cioba Venport had obtained from her own VenHold operatives, Emperor Salvador had stationed a small contingent of troops near the former Sisterhood settlement. Although the soldiers had poor service records and substandard equipment, Valya was sure the guards were here at Dorotea’s suggestion to make certain the exiled Sisters didn’t try to return to the cliff city. Dorotea wanted to keep her faction of pandering Sisters important to the Emperor — and keep Raquella irrelevant.
I should have killed Dorotea while she lay writhing from the poison, Valya thought. But no one had expected her to live through the Agony. No previous Sister candidate had survived intact, with the exception of Raquella herself.
Since the Imperial contingent had only rudimentary surveillance equipment, the camouflaged VenHold craft easily slipped past their scans and set down in a jungle clearing several kilometers from their destination. She listened to the low conversations of her team members, heard the excitement and anticipation in their voices. Simply returning to the order’s original home planet felt like a kind of victory for them.
Stepping outside into the heady jungle wearing a night-vision headset, Valya listened to the rustle of animals gliding through the underbrush. She didn’t worry. Many times, she had traveled the depths of the jungle when she assisted Karee Marques in search of natural toxins or drugs.
Through the illumination enhancers she magnified the view and saw the majestic cliff city in the distance, its pockmarked stone face riddled with tunnels and now-empty living quarters. At one time this had been the Sisterhood’s vibrant hub; now it was nothing but faded memories. She could no longer discern the trails or crepelike balconies that had graced the sheer stone wall.
In those days, the breeding computers had been concealed up there in a cavern deep inside the cliff. Egged on by the insistent Dorotea, the paranoid Emperor’s search team had ransacked the tunnels, but Valya had already whisked the dangerous technology away. Undeterred by the lack of proof, the Emperor had slaughtered the Sister Mentats and the remaining Sorceresses, who were merely trying to protect their school. Even though Salvador Corrino had given the order, Valya still placed the blame on Dorotea.
As her team members emerged from the shuttle and gathered their equipment, she inhaled the moist, odor-rich jungle air. While gazing at the haunted-looking cliff city, she remembered the women she’d known there. In the back of her mind, Valya heard what sounded like a murmur of human voices, as if the honeycombed cliffside were saturated with the spirits of dead Sisters. She felt a sudden chill as the voices called out plaintively, moaning for what was lost and would never be again.
Valya had enough ghosts in her own past, and too much blood on her hands. And she wasn’t finished yet. Even with all the struggles of the downtrodden Sisterhood, she thought angrily of her slain brother, Griffin, and the generations of disgrace that House Harkonnen had suffered. The blood Valya wanted on her hands was Atreides blood.
When the rest of her team stood equipped and ready to move through the undergrowth, Valya activated a holomap in the air, and her team gathered around. “We’re here,” she said, pointing. “This sinkhole is our destination. Three of you were with me when we sealed away the computers, and though it’s been less than a year, the jungle reclaims its territory quickly.”
She regarded them all. “We retrieve what is ours, which will bring us one step closer to rebuilding the Sisterhood to what it is meant to be.”
VALYA AND HER comrades trudged through the gloomy Rossak jungles. Carrying electronic locators, they moved behind two trailblazing commandos who wielded melters that dissolved the tangled plants to clear a wide path.
Their tracks would be obvious, but once they escaped with the computers, Valya didn’t care. Imperial scouts would never guess what had really happened, and the fecund silvery purple foliage of Rossak would erase the scars quickly enough.
All of them still wore enhancement goggles, which added a greenish outline to everything around them. Behind the trail-cutters, six commandos guided silent suspensor bins to hold all of the sealed components.
Valya sent two women ahead, with two others on each side to watch for any dangers. They found a game trail trending in the right direction, and the foliage melters cleared the path through vines and tangled shrubs. Sister Olivia and two others maneuvered the suspensor bins. It was warm even in the night, and Valya perspired heavily.