Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [26]
Duncan’s right side still ached from the last episode. As if he were a prized animal, his tormentors had put his injured body through a skin-knit machine and acu-cellular repair. His ribs still didn’t quite feel right, but they had been getting better each day. Until now.
With the locator beacon implanted in the meat of his shoulder, Duncan could never really escape from this slaveholding metropolis. Barony was a megalithic construction of plasteel and armor-plaz, 950 stories tall and 45 kilometers long, with no ground-level openings whatsoever. He always found plenty of places to hide during the Harkonnen games, but never any freedom.
The Harkonnens had many prisoners, and they had sadistic methods of making them cooperate. If Duncan won in this training hunt, if he eluded the searchers long enough, the keepers had promised that he and his family could return to their former lives. All the children had been promised the same thing. Trainees needed a goal, a prize to fight for.
He ran by instinct through the secret passageways, trying to muffle his footfalls. Not far behind, he heard the blast and sizzle of a stun gun firing, a child’s high-pitched squeal of pain, and then teeth-chattering spasms as another one of the young boys was brought to ground.
If the searchers captured you, they hurt you—sometimes seriously and sometimes worse, depending upon the current supply of “trainees.” This was no child’s game of hide-and-seek. At least not for the victims.
Even at his age, Duncan already knew that life and death had a price. The Harkonnens didn’t care how many small candidates suffered during the course of their training. This was how the Harkonnens played. Duncan understood cruel amusements. He had seen others do such things before, especially the children with whom he shared confinement, as they pulled the wings off insects or set tiny rodent babies on fire. The Harkonnens and their troops were like adult children, only with greater resources, greater imaginations, greater malice.
Without making a sound, he found a narrow, rusted access ladder and scrambled up into the darkness, wasting no time on thought. Duncan had to do the unexpected, hide where they’d have trouble reaching him. The rungs, pitted and scarred with age, hurt his hands.
This section of ancient Barony still functioned; power conduits and suspensor tubes shot through the main structure like wormholes—straight, curved, hooking off at oblique angles. The place was one enormous obstacle course, where the Harkonnen troops could fire upon their prey without risking damage to more important structures.
Above him in a main corridor, he heard booted feet running, filtered voices through helmet communicators, then a shout. A nearby pinging sound signaled that the guards had homed in on his locator implant.
Hot white lasgun fire blasted the ceiling over his head, melting through metal plates. Duncan let go of the ladder and allowed himself to drop, freefall. One armed guard peeled up the hot-edged floor plate and pointed down at him. The others fired their lasguns again, severing the struts so that the ladder fell in tandem with the small boy.
He landed on the floor of a lower shaft, and the heavy ladder clattered on top of him. But Duncan didn’t cry out in pain. That would only bring the pursuers closer . . . though he had no real hope of eluding them for long because of the pulsing beacon in his shoulder. How could anyone but Harkonnens win this game?
He pushed himself to his feet and ran with a new, frantic desire for freedom. To his dismay, the small tunnel ahead opened into a wider passage. Wider was bad. The bigger men could follow him there.
He heard shouts behind, more running feet, gunfire, and then a gurgling scream. The pursuers were supposed to be using stun guns, but Duncan knew that this late in the day