Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [28]
There were no doors, no open passageways. Duncan could run no farther. The men surged close behind him, extending their guns. If he surrendered, he wondered if they would still shoot him down. Probably, he thought, since I’ve gotten their adrenaline going.
The suspensor field shimmered in the center of the horizontal shaft in front of him. He vaguely knew what it would do. He had only one place left to go, and he wasn’t sure what would happen—but he knew he’d be punished, or most likely slaughtered, if the guards captured him.
So as they pressed closer, Duncan turned around and gazed into the suspensor field. Taking a deep breath for courage, he swung his short arms behind him and leaped out into the open shimmering tube.
His curly black hair rippled in the breeze as he plummeted. He shouted, the sound halfway between a despairing wail and a cry of glorious release. If he died here, at least he would be free!
Then the Holtzman field wrapped around him and caught him with a jolt. Feeling as if his stomach had just lurched to the center of his chest, Duncan found himself adrift in an invisible net. He floated without falling, hanging in the neutral center of the field. This force held the bullet-trains suspended as they careened through mammoth Barony. It could certainly hold him.
He saw the guards rushing to the edge of the platform, shouting at him in anger. One shook a fist. Two others pointed their guns.
Duncan flailed in the field, trying to swim—anything to move away.
With a shout of alarm, a guard knocked the other’s lasgun aside. Duncan had heard about the nightmarish effects of a lasgun beam crossing a Holtzman field: They produced an interacting destructive potential as deadly as forbidden atomics themselves.
So the guards fired their stun weapons instead.
Duncan writhed in the air. Though he could get no leverage, at least he made a moving target as he squirmed and spun. Stun blasts arced on either side of him, diverted into curving paths.
Despite the confining embrace of the Holtzman field, he felt the air pressure change around him, sensed the currents of movement. He rotated himself, bobbing in the air—until he saw the oncoming lights of a bullet-train.
And he was at the center of the field!
Duncan thrashed, desperate to move. He drifted toward the opposite edge of the levitation zone, away from the guards. They continued to fire, but the change in air pressure pushed their stun blasts even farther off the mark than before. He saw the uniformed men making adjustments.
Below him were other doorways, ramps, and platforms that led into the bowels of Barony. Maybe he could reach one . . . if he could just escape the confining field.
Another stun blast tore past and this time caught the edge of his back near his shoulder, numbing him, making the muscles and skin crawl with a sensation like a thousand stinging insects.
Duncan finally wrenched himself away from the field and dropped. Falling facedown, he saw the platform just in time. He reached out with his good arm and snagged a railing. The bullet-train screamed past, whistling as it displaced air . . . missing him by centimeters.
He hadn’t had time to pick up much momentum in his fall; even so, the jarring stop nearly ripped his other arm out of its socket. Duncan scrambled up and ran into a tunnel, but found only a tiny alcove with metawalls. He could see no exit. The hatch was sealed and locked. He pounded on it, but couldn’t go anywhere.
Then, the outer door clanged shut behind him, sealing him into a small armor-walled box. He was trapped. This time it was over.
Moments later, the guards unsealed the rear hatch. Their stares, as pointed as their weapons, held