Hunters of Dune - Brian Herbert [88]
“Shall we destroy them, Mother Commander? Or seize their cargoes?”
“Neither.” She watched the tiny ships flitting away from the ocean world. If the smugglers had proved to be a significant drain on the soostone wealth, the Honored Matres would never have let them survive. “We have a more important target down there. We’ll oust the Honored Matres and negotiate with the smugglers afterward.”
She led the warships to their formal conquest of the few specks of habitable land on the vast, fertile ocean.
Buzzell had long been used as a Bene Gesserit punishment planet where the Sisterhood discarded those who had disappointed them, women who had failed the ancient order in some manner. The ocean world wasn’t much to look at, but the rich, deep sea was home to shelled creatures, called cholisters, that produced elegant gems.
Soostones. Noble women flaunted them; collectors and artisans paid inflated prices for them.
Like Rakis, she thought. Ironic, that the worst places produce the items of greatest value.
The Honored Matres’ inexorable search for wealth had drawn their attentions to Buzzell years ago. After the whores overran the islands on the vast oceans, they had killed most of the disgraced Bene Gesserit Sisters and forced the survivors to harvest soostones for them.
Now, assisted by orbital surveillance, Murbella easily determined which were the main inhabited landmasses barely poking above the waves. The New Sisterhood would recapture the nerve centers of soostone activity from the Honored Matres. Soon, Buzzell would have different leaders.
The Richesian battle craft landed around the primary soostone-processing encampment. Such a great number of vessels overwhelmed the tiny landing area and most were forced to rely on inflatable pontoons, raft piers, and simple suspensor fields on the water. Ships encircled the rocky island like a noose.
As it turned out, apart from the frigates in orbit, barely more than a hundred of the whores held the facilities of Buzzell in their iron grip. When the Valkyries arrived, the Honored Matres who lived on this island in the finest (though still spartan) buildings, rushed out, fully armed. Though they fought viciously, the women were greatly outnumbered and outmatched. Murbella’s fighters easily assassinated half of them before the rest capitulated. The losses were expected.
The Mother Commander strode out into the biting, salty air to begin surveying the sparse world she had just conquered.
When the fighters rounded up the surviving Honored Matres, Murbella discovered nine women who clearly did not belong among them, downtrodden yet proud in tattered black robes. Bene Gesserit. Only nine! Buzzell had been a punishment planet for well over a hundred Sisters . . . and only nine had survived the whores.
Murbella stalked back and forth, looking at the gathered women. Her Valkyries stood in formation behind her, their black singlesuit uniforms embellished with sharp black spikes, used as ornamentation and as weapons. The Honored Matres looked defiant, murderous—exactly as Murbella expected. The captive Sisters averted their eyes, having spent so many years in the yoke of oppressive mistresses.
“I am your new commander. Who among you claimed to lead these women?” She swept a whipsaw gaze across them. “Who will be my underling here?”
“We are not underlings,” one sinewy Honored Matre sneered, spoiling for a fight. “We don’t know you, nor do we recognize your authority. You act like an Honored Matre, but you have the smell of witches about you. I don’t think you are either.”
So Murbella killed her.
The Honored Matre leader had persecuted Sisters here for years. Her kicks and blows were swift, but insufficient in the face of Murbella’s combined training. With a broken neck, snapped ribs, and blood oozing from burst eardrums, the arrogant woman dropped dead to the black stones of the reef settlement.
Murbella never broke a sweat. She turned to the others. “Now, who speaks for you? Who will be my first underling?”
One of the other Honored Matres stepped forward. “I am