He took a cautious step toward the young Mother Superior, thinking there might be another way out of this. “I am the one you want. I’m the one you’ve always wanted. I caused Abulurd’s downfall after the Battle of Corrin and forced his exile to Lankiveil. I was there when your brother Griffin died, even if I did not kill him. End your vendetta against the Atreides here and now, and take it out on me instead. After this, give Willem the freedom to live his own life — so that your sister and her child can be safe.”
“Why should I listen to you?” Valya’s eyes were steely.
Vor gave her a cold smile. “We still have something to settle.” He felt no fear, paid no attention to the other Sister commandos who had come here to kill them, didn’t care about Korla or the fascinated scavengers watching the scene now. “I will face you here — as Griffin and I once faced each other in the sietch on Arrakis, before we put aside our differences. But I need assurances of Willem’s safety.”
The Queen of Trash interrupted them. “I’ll make the arrangements on his behalf. Vorian Atreides did well enough with us here, even saved some of our own. We’ll see that young Willem leaves unharmed, with no interference from these women.”
The Sisters had a chartered spacefolder in orbit, and with the New Voyager, Vor had his own way off the planet, if he survived. Korla would see that Willem made his way to Salusa Secundus — but Vor had to defeat Valya first.
Willem finally holstered his weapon, and Tula nearly collapsed from her bleeding wound. While Vor and Valya continued to face each other like hair-trigger weapons, one of the commando Sisters applied a field-dressing medpack to Tula’s injury. The lean, older Sister looked up and gave her assessment. “She needs more care than I can give her here, Mother Superior Valya. We need to get her back up to the main ship.”
“Not yet,” Valya said. She turned once more toward Vorian. “She will want to watch this. She needs to see it.”
Vorian’s world focused on his deadly opponent, and he crouched, ready to fight for his life. He reconsidered the wisdom of that, because he knew that even if he defeated Valya Harkonnen here, even if it was a fair fight in front of witnesses, he was sure she would want revenge after all … that she might never let Willem live his life in peace.
“I am the one you blame for all that has gone wrong with House Harkonnen,” Vor said in a strong voice, hammering the point home. “I am responsible for everything — isn’t that the conclusion you reached? If my life is the only payment you’ll accept for that debt, then come and take it.”
He saw only one way that the Harkonnens would ever relent. He had been prepared for this all along.
In a lightning-fast move, Valya lashed out and struck him, knocking him off his feet. He scrambled back up, but she was a dervish, unleashing years of pent-up hatred and blame. He counterattacked, but could hardly land a blow against her. When he did strike a hard blow in her midsection, she brushed it off and redoubled her attack. Her fighting skills were far superior to Griffin’s, and obviously superior to his own.
Coughing blood, Vor looked up and saw a murderous glint in Valya’s dark eyes. He spoke through bloody lips, “When you kill me, will you finally be satisfied? Will each of our Houses be whole again?” He needed to make her see the folly of her obsession. He was like a man on his deathbed, trying to right a lifetime of wrongs, real or perceived.
“Stop this, Valya,” Tula pleaded. She looked gray-skinned, and the right half of her dark suit was soaked with blood.
But Valya came at him again.
From blow after blow, Vor saw red static around his vision. His head rang as she smashed her open palms against his temples, but they were not mortal blows. In the roar inside his ears, he could hear the Corrin scavengers shouting, calling for him to beat her. He was certain Valya intended to kill him. If he just allowed it, he could end this feud. He’d had a long life, and he was weary in so many ways.
Valya slammed him down to the rubble, threw herself on top of his prone form, pummeling him. He used all his skills to block her repeated attempts at a deathblow, but his energy was waning. Pain erupted from a dozen different injuries, any one of them nearly crippling.
On one side, Willem was shouting in dismay.
Valya knew the most lethal places to strike a human body. She was hurting him intentionally, trying to make him suffer, short of killing him. Finally, he sensed her whole body change, and she coiled for the final deathblow. She would strike like a sledgehammer and cave in his skull.
And Vor was ready for it.
80
Truth and honor are the allies of the righteous.
Desperation and deceit are the allies of the morally weak.
Emperor Roderick’s sudden salvo took the crews aboard the damaged VenHold ships by surprise. Kinetic projectiles slammed against enhanced shields, and even though they failed to penetrate, the avalanche of explosive shells overloaded some of the shield generators that had been under repair since the battle of Lampadas.
As the barriers wavered, Emperor Roderick sat on his command bridge, flanked by Truthsayer Fielle and Admiral Harte. “Continue the bombardment on those ships. Their systems will fail soon, if we can keep firing.” He turned to Harte. “With our inventory of projectiles, how long can we sustain the barrage at this intensity?”
The Admiral asked a young officer on the bridge, who responded, “We planned for this, Sire. Our ships carry weaponry that is disproportionate to their model. We can continue at this constant rate for seven hours. I cannot say whether that will be sufficient.”
“We will have our answer sooner than seven hours.” The Emperor felt an angry ache inside that sharpened his focus into an executioner’s blade. Anna … such an innocent, naïve girl. He couldn’t believe Venport would be so foolish as to kill her preemptively; therefore, something else must have happened. An accident? An illness? Some other tragedy? It didn’t really matter. In any case, she was dead. Roderick knew that his sister had often been her own worst enemy.
While he could never forgive Venport for assassinating his brother, Salvador’s stupid actions had brought about his own demise. Anna, though, was merely a pawn — a flighty girl with absolutely no understanding of the web tangled around her. Venport had taken her hostage for his own purposes, and now she was dead.
For that, Roderick vowed to obliterate the Directeur and everything he cherished.
The VenHold defenders fought back against the Imperial forces, launching a high-powered retaliation, but Roderick remained grimly determined. His fleet pressed onward. Occasionally, one of Harte’s ships withdrew, but only if it had suffered so much damage that it could no longer function properly. Still, the rest of the Imperial fleet kept firing. He had learned that type of relentlessness from the Butlerians.
“Continue bombardment. Maintain maximum shields.” Their invisible defenses were a complex, flickering pattern in which sections of overlapping Holtzman shields dropped to allow the launch of projectiles, then resealed the gaps with nanosecond timing.
Soon, some of the VenHold vessels — particularly the undamaged commercial ships that had come here at Norma Cenva’s call — became adept at finding and predicting those nanosecond weaknesses, and a few projectiles managed to slip through and seriously damage two Imperial ships. Other shields were failing as well.