Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [195]
He would have time for guilt later.
The commsystems at the piloting station buzzed with Sheeana’s voice. “Duncan! Duncan, why don’t you respond?”
As he threw himself into the chair, he glanced up at the front viewport. A dozen small spacecraft were rising from the planet below, burning streaks through the atmosphere and moving directly toward the no-ship. “I am here,” he said. “What’s happening? What is your status?” The lighter was coming back at top speed, discarding safety restrictions.
Garimi’s voice came over the in-ship channel. “I am already on my way to the receiving bay. Get the ship prepared to receive them. Something has gone terribly wrong down on the planet.”
Now Duncan heard a faint emergency message chattering across the commline. Miles Teg, but his voice sounded weak. “Our maneuverability is severely compromised.”
Tracer fire came from the other ships that followed close behind. Teg performed evasions with masterful agility, swooping one way and then another, closing in on the orbiting Ithaca. With the no-field in place, no one should have been able to see the giant ship’s location.
Cursing his distraction and the stranglehold Murbella unwittingly still had on him, Duncan dropped the Ithaca’s no-field just long enough to let Teg see where to go. He was already warming up the navigation systems and the Holtzman engines.
Garimi had opened the small landing-bay doors on one of the lower decks, no more than a tiny speck on the hull of the great ship. But the Bashar knew where to go. He aimed directly toward the sanctuary, and the Handler ships closed in. Not designed as a fast military craft, the lighter was losing ground as the much swifter pursuers gained on it. More unidentified ships launched from the planet below. It had seemed to be such a bucolic civilization. . . .
Sheeana was on the commsystem again. “They’re Face Dancers, Duncan. The Handlers are Face Dancers!”
Teg added, “And they are in league with the Enemy! We cannot let them have access to this ship. It’s what they’ve wanted all along.”
Sheeana joined in, her voice ragged with exhaustion. “The Handlers are not so primitive as they appeared. They have heavy weaponry that could disable the Ithaca. It was a trap.”
On the screen, weapons fire barely missed the lighter, scoring the broad plane of the Ithaca’s hull. Teg did not decelerate, or alter course. On the commsystem, he sounded just like the old Bashar. “Duncan, you know what you have to do. If they come too close, just fold space and get away!”
Teg plunged the lighter into the open docking bay as fast as a bullet, only seconds ahead of the Handler ships. The pursuing craft raced forward, not decelerating, fully prepared to crash headlong into the Ithaca. To what purpose? To cripple the vessel so it couldn’t leave?
From the landing bay, Garimi yelled, “Now, Duncan! Get us out of here!”
Duncan reactivated the no-field, and as far as the pursuers could see, the Ithaca vanished, leaving only a hole in space. The Handler ships could not land, nor did they pull up, apparently willing to do anything to prevent the Ithaca from escaping. Six of them continued to accelerate toward where the vessel had been—and plowed into the unseen hull of the no-ship like buckshot hitting a broad wall.
The impacts rocked the immense vessel, and the deck beneath Duncan’s feet reeled and tilted. Though damage lights winked on all across the control panels, he saw that the foldspace engines were intact, functional, and ready to go.
The Holtzman engines hummed, and the ship began its move between and around the fabric of the universe. Alone on the navigation bridge, he watched the aurora of colors and bending shapes that surrounded the great vessel.
But something was interfering—a shimmering, multicolored grid of energy threads. The net had found them again! Thanks to the Handlers, the Enemy had somehow known exactly where to look.
The colors