Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [5]
Weary with facts and forced memories, Teg switched off the records, stretched his thin arms, and left the archives sector. He would spend several hours in vigorous physical training, then work on his weapons skills.
Though he lived in the body of a thirteen-year-old, it was his job to remain ready for everything, and never lower his guard.
Why ask a man who is already lost to lead you? Why then are you surprised if he leads you nowhere?
—DUNCAN IDAHO,
A Thousand Lives
T
hey were adrift. They were safe. They were lost.
An unidentifiable ship in an unidentifiable universe.
Alone on the navigation bridge, as he often was, Duncan Idaho knew that powerful enemies were still after them. Threats within threats within threats. The no-ship wandered the frigid void, far from any recorded human exploration. A different universe entirely. He couldn’t decide whether they were hiding or trapped. He wouldn’t have known how to get back to a familiar star system, even if he’d wanted to.
According to the bridge’s independent chronometers, they had been in this strange, distorted otherwhere for years . . . though who could say how time flowed in another universe? The laws of physics and the landscape of the galaxy might be completely altered here.
Abruptly, as if his concerns had been laced with prescience, he noticed the main instrument panel blinking erratically, while the stabilizing engines surged up and down. Though he couldn’t see anything more unusual than the now-familiar twistings of gases and distorted energy ripples, the no-ship had encountered what he’d come to think of as a “rough patch.” How could they encounter turbulence in space when nothing was there?
The ship shook in a whiplash of strange gravity, jarred by a spray of high-energy particles. When Duncan switched off the automatic piloting systems and altered course, the situation worsened. Barely perceptible flashes of orange light appeared in front of the vessel, like a faint, flickering fire. He felt the deck shudder, as if he had rammed into some obstacle, but he could see nothing. Nothing at all! It should have been an empty vacuum, giving them no sensation of movement or turbulence. Strange universe.
Duncan corrected course until the instruments and engines smoothed out, and the flashes disappeared. If the danger grew any worse, he might be forced to attempt yet another risky foldspace jump. Upon leaving Chapterhouse, he had flown the no-ship without guidance, having purged all navigation systems and coordinate files, using nothing but his intuition and rudimentary prescience. Each time he activated the Holtzman engines, Duncan gambled with the whole ship, and the lives of the 150 refugees aboard. He wouldn’t do it unless he had to.
Three years ago, he’d had no choice. Duncan had lifted the great craft from its landing field—not escaping per se, but stealing the entire prison where the Sisterhood had put him. And simply flying away wasn’t sufficient. In his attuned mind, he had seen the trap closing around them. The Outside Enemy observers, in their bizarrely innocuous guises of an old man and an old woman, had a net they could cast across vast distances to entangle the no-ship. He’d seen the sparkling multicolored mesh begin to contract, and the strange old couple smiling with victory. They had thought he and the no-ship were in their grasp.
His fingers a blur, his concentration sharp as a diamond chip, Duncan had made the Holtzman engines do things that not even a Guild Navigator would ask of them. As the Enemy’s invisible web ensnared the no-ship, Duncan had flung them away, flying the enormous vessel so deeply into the folds of space that he tore the fabric of the universe itself and slid beyond. His ancient Swordmaster